


You and Me, Going Fishing in the Dark

by Write_like_an_American



Series: How To Train Your Buglin [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Animal Transformation, Animalistic, Bickering, Biting, Body Horror, Breeding, Buglin, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Somnophilia, Dual Genitalia, Established Relationship, Faked Suicide, Fix-It, Fluff and Smut, Jealousy, Knotting, Kraglin and Yondu need to actually talk about shit rather than letting it fester, Kraglin has a Dark Past, Kraglin has the fin and the arrow, Kraglin is permitted to Awoo, Kraglin-centric, M/M, Old Married Couple, Penis In Vagina Sex, Poor Peter, Prayer circle for Yondu's vag, Presumed Dead, Retirement, Rough Sex, Rutting, Scent Kink, Sex Gone Wrong, Violence, Violent Sex, Were-Creatures, Yondu? Yondu has an allotment, and a new grandson, bilgesnipe sex chair, granddad Yondu, kragdu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:51:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13025577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: Near death experiences tend to make a guy re-evaluate his life, even when that guy is an infamous Ravager captain. After the Ego incident, Yondu needs a getaway. His retirement asteroid becomes a peaceful home base for the Guardians: no Stakar, no space battles, nothing to worry about but Yondu's cabbage crop and the occasional rampaging bilgesnipe.But Kraglin – haunted by nightmares, keeper of secrets, in charge of his captain's legacy – has started to crack at the seams.It'd be real nice if somebody noticed.





	1. Lying On Our Backs and Counting the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for the 2017 Kragdu Big Bang, organized by the freaking incredible Obfonteri. It takes a village to do anything, and half a discord chat group to finish a fic. Mega thanks to EVERYONE who got sent snippets. Your advice has been invaluable. Especial thanks to Nat, for creating this challenge and motivating me to turn my small collection of half-written scenes into an actual fic that has spawned two multi-chapter sequels, the first of which will begin publishing in the new year. _You're welcome._**
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> ****  
> **ALSO a massive amount of thanks goes to my artist, AlexanderBadass! Your work captures the atmosphere of this fic so perfectly. Thank you for your effort and support. x**  
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(Art by the stupendous AlexanderBadass!)

 

 

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It was a truth universally acknowledged, among the scum and the scallywags who steered their ships through No Man's Space, that Yondu Udonta was dead.

He was gone, burned, and dedicated to the void – in that order, too. The once-infamous captain of the _Eclector,_ whose bounty posters loured from the walls of merc-bars in Nova-space and Kree territory and everywhere between, had been reduced to a trail of glittering ash. The legend unravelled. The undefeatable, defeated. And while his name lived on – and his arrow, thanks to his sullen scrap of a mate – the man himself had passed through the hollow eyesocket of Lady Thanatos. He walked among the mirrored spires of Valhalla (or the halls of Ogord, or lightless Hel, or Malekith's infernal realm, or whatever else you chose to believe). But one thing was for certain. He wasn't coming back.

In fact, Yondu was so dead that Kraglin and Peter described his death to anyone who would listen, in detail.

They related how Yondu attached the last vac-suit to Peter's chest. How he cupped his cheek and _smiled_ – not one of his sharkish grins, but a soft upwards tremble of the lips, eyes shining as he told his boy just how much he loved him, how sorry he was, and how proud.

They flew through Ego's dissipating atmosphere, pure hell bulging on their heels. And Yondu suffocated there, in Peter's arms. Lungs deflating in his chest. Blood vessels bursting in his eyes. Lips and fingertips seared by frost, as he sacrificed himself for the boy he called son.

Space-death worked slower than expected. Not too gory; no pops or splats. No need to rub down the _Quadrant's_ windshield. Yondu's internal bits stayed where they belonged. They merely shut down, one by one, as bubbles popped in his brain and his soft tissues swelled with edematic gout. It was, according to the vast majority, no less than he deserved.

But there were those who missed him.

They commed a week later. News traveled faster than flak through the vacuum. The death of a Celestial was the sort of seismic shift that defined timelines, and The One Who Knows would be hard-pressed to ignore the tremors, as Ego popped like a squeezed pimple, and a Terran and Centaurian jetted for the sky. And so, the Ogord Clans learned what Yondu had done. They heard tell of his part in the defeat of the greatest threat to the galaxy since Ronan wielded the stone. And, hearing how the story ended, they came – all ninety-nine factions – to pay their respects.

They had fireworks for Udonta, they said. They brought a message for whatever remained of his crew. One of peace. Of truce. An extended olive branch – or a blaster pistol held out hilt-first; that was more their style.

The radio silence lasted one whole revolution of the chronometers. Then, at last, the _Quadrant_ returned their call.

Rocket disclosed their co-ordinates only after pressing. He tacked them to the end of a teary-eyed polemic that made Stakar's smile waver, and Aleta's manic grin slip.

The funeral was a farce. They did it anyway.

They had no ashes to reflect the lights of Ogord; the Guardians disposed of the corpse long before the Clans arrived. The Terran, Quill, couldn’t bear seeing Yondu laid out on his byre, toys and cloth strips heaped over his frost-blackened shell. Rather than fulfilling the usual rites (keeping the captain in cold storage for a week to give those who knew him time to gather) they burned Yondu as soon as they could spare the fuel.

Stakar understood. Yondu died alone even as Quill cradled him, believing himself unloved – by Stakar, by the Ravagers, by his own damn son. He thought no one would come.

And yet, here they were.

Guilt kept Stakar from glowering at his once-friend's arrow, strapped to the belt of his mate. The man had been no more than a boy the last time he and Stakar stood civilly at opposite ends of a room. Nowadays, he didn't look much more menacing. Xandarian, wasn't he? All leather and grease and squiggly tattoos, stooped over the arrow in case it harbored his captain's ghost. He was nothing.

But at the end of the day, this man – _Kraglin Obfonteri,_ Charlie reminded him; Stakar had dusted his name onto the shelf reserved for _people I'm never likely to talk to_ – remained loyal. He stood beside Yondu. He listened and counselled, where Stakar was quick to cast out. He deserved Yondu’s effects.

Frustration soured on Stakar’s tongue. No liquor could dilute it, no huffer-root dispel its astringent taste. He always hoped Yondu would redeem himself. After Xandar, there'd been a chance – but then they met on Contraxia, amid the swirling snow-drifts and the wheeze and grind of calipers in the bot hookers' cunts. Yondu thumped his chest, hunched like a slave in the first phase of the Humility Bow. And Stakar turned him down.

The Guardians, Obfonteri, even the Titan's rogue daughter, all went out of their way to impress on Stakar that Yondu died a hero. Obfonteri and Quill rubbed in the extra salt. Yondu thought he deserved every shit card he got dealt, right up to the grisly end.

A shame, all of it. A true shame. But Stakar had lived many lives and he would live many again. If this universe’s Yondu was past help, he simply had to learn from his mistakes. Next time, he vowed, he would do right by his old friend.

As for Obfonteri? The captain was dead. Long live the captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Please leave kudos! Comments are even better, but I appreciate every click of that heart button. Don't just give me an empty hit! x**
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> **Recommended listening: 'Fishing in the Dark' by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from which the chapter titles are taken. My favorite cover is a mashup with 'Boondocks' by Little Big Town, as performed a capella by Home Free! You can find it on Youtube. I like to think it captures the feel of this fic and the sequel - I listened to it on repeat while writing!**


	2. Where the Cool Grass Grows

Six months later, Kraglin Obfonteri tramped through his M-ship, cracking his stiff neck from side to side. He remembered to duck when he climbed into the cockpit, watching the asteroid approach on which he was due to dock. But it was a narrow thing, and his fin scraped the underside of the trapdoor, sparks skittering from the metal and singeing the back of his neck.

Kraglin hissed. While the implant housed no nerve endings, the join to his skull smarted something awful.

Not as bad as it used to though, when Nebula and Rocket first fitted the thing. The procedure was straightforward – so they claimed. But, for no other reason than that the cosmos hated him, they ballsed _something_ up which left Kraglin bandaged and bed-bound, convalescing for a week.

Nebula couldn't explain what. Rocket was equally helpless. “I'm an engineer, Krags, not a doctor!” had been uttered, and Peter laughed so hard he almost pissed.

Kraglin suggested shoddy cabling. Rocket tried to brain him with his wrench. The rodent insisted he'd done a sterling job, but Kraglin couldn't think of any _other_ reason why it hurt.

Prosthetics weren't supposed to do that. Kraglin underwent his operation in the medbay of Stakar’s personal flagship, with a sober surgeon and a general anesthetic – both of which had been in short supply on the _Eclector._ He’d received state-of-the-art care. As Stakar said, it was the least he could do.  

Yet the pain throbbed near-constant. It was as if the surgeon snapped a scalpel and stitched him up around it, a razor blade worked around by the pulse of his brain. 

Kraglin bent his forehead to the porthole. The months had paid their toll. It was time to go home.

He'd fobbed his crew off with the usual story. A job with the Guardians, easy money. Temporary command went to Kraglin's first mate – some slick kid Stakar recommended, whose name Kraglin learned, but pretended he hadn't. Their course would intersect with his at the end of the week.

Everything was prepared. Each factor in his control was under it. All that remained was for Kraglin to make landfall.

No mag-locks here, no hooks and cranes or automatic docking procedures. Kraglin guided his bird down manually, twisting the joystick to engage her landing gear.

The terrain made it a challenge. Scrub spilled over those few hillocks not thick with trunks. Jungle creepers tangled in a rug. But they'd cleared a patch for this purpose, him and the Guardians toiling side by side. Kraglin dredged unfond memories: hacking clumped stalks, sap sticking his palms to the machete hilt – then waving that machete in the air and screeching when a caterpillar fell down his collar.

So sue him. Xandarians and nature were never meant to mix.

Kraglin winched the gang ramp down slowly, not wanting to disturb the wildlife. He could appreciate the beauty of the place, even if the pollen made him sneeze. This asteroid had been terraformed, but never colonized. It was lush and green, atmosphere and gravity maintained by a generator rammed deep into its crust. It spanned approximately five hundred miles square, wrapped around a knobbly, asymmetrical mass of space rock. Foliage flourished on every facet of the sloppy-cut emerald.

The dwarf star floated close enough that temperatures fluctuated between greenhouse and rainforest. The trees glowed verdant, trapped in continuous bloom. Fruit dripped from overladen branches. It was syrupy-sweet and plentiful, if you harvested it before infestation; Kraglin had learned the hard way that you should always conduct a maggot-check before biting.

Insects – there were always insects. They chittered as Kraglin broke the airlock seal, cicadas rattling and millipedes scuttling and flies buzzing like a distant grind saw.

There were other creatures too, larger and more ferocious. Their numbers multiplied the further into the forest you trekked. The asteroid straddled one of the main smuggling back routes into the Shi'ar empire, and as such, it became a dumping ground for poached species. Rumor had it there was even a bilgesnipe or three. They bellowed at night – although that could just be rock resettling around the gravity-core.

Kraglin stepped outside. Birds burst from the overhead branches as he walked. Bright colored things, jewel-blue and purple. Rudimentary teeth serrated their beaks and they jabbered in a squawking tongue. Once they'd flapped into the canopy, Kraglin pried his hand from his sweaty rubber pistol grip. He shook his head, wincing as the prosthetic exaggerated the movement. It set him perpetually off-balance, tipping a little too far to either side.

He had nothing to be afraid of here. Nothing but what he'd so very nearly lost.

And the bugs, of course.

Kraglin could handle lice – a spacer never complained about picking the odd shell case from his pubic hair. But here, the rich oxygen content meant critters grew to the length of his forearm at a minimum. And they were _everywhere._

His bioscanner strobed from the presence of a million creepie-crawlies who – as the name suggested – crept and crawled through the thicket and burrowed into the rich red soil. He crushed a baby centipede by accident, then dug his heel in and ground.

Was it any wonder that he rejected the offer to stay?

Kraglin trudged along the forest path, following the boar tracks until he found the stream. It purled quietly to itself, hemmed in by bulrushes and cotton-candy puffs of pampas grass, which wafted on level with Kraglin's itching nose.

He never expected to make captain. He certainly never dreamed that captaincy would come hand-in-hand with allies who made galaxy saving their day-job, and an invitation to integrate the 99th back into the Clans.

It all happened so _fast._ And now, six months later, there was still so much to _do._ People to threaten, crew to keep in line. Discipline to be dished and Stakar's calls to be returned. He’d never wanted it – but that was petty. Kraglin aspired not to be. Their ragtag excuse for a family already had too many grudges plucking at its seams.

This place, tucked away at Galaxy's Edge with only a sparse field of quasars and dead comets between it and deadspace, felt insulated from the rush. Here there was peace. There was also goop dripping onto Kraglin's face from a snapped branch, but he tried to focus on positives.

Wiping only smeared the resin into his stubble.

“Gross. You got a hankie or somethin’?”

Follow the stream long enough, you found a clearing. Beyond the clearing a fence, and beyond the fence a garden, whose array of vegetables could rival the forest for diversity.

And there, amid his fattening brassicas, sat Yondu Udonta.

Yondu was stripped to the waist. A shovel teetered in the earth besides him. It leaned at an obtuse angle, its shadow spooled long by the late evening sun. Dropping the trowel, he dug his fingers into the ground, gathering a clod of root and reddish clay. This, predictably, got lobbed at Kraglin.

Kraglin sidestepped. He was smiling, just a little.

“That ain't much help.”

Yondu kept wrestling his weeds. Something told Kraglin he was smirking too.

“It's sap, idjit. Lick it.”

“ _You_ lick it.”

“Maybe later. I gotta finish this row, then wash up. Ya can have yer hello after.”

Kraglin propped his elbows on the fence. Peter and Gamora erected it five-and-a-bit months ago, grumbling at the array of posts, wires, and pins until Rocket sighed and took over directing. Now it stood, ramshackle but sturdy, reinforced in the wake of stampeding boars and slanting in the direction of the wind.

“What'chu doin'?” he asked, mostly to make conversation.

Yondu yanked another weed, cussing when he snipped the root. He clawed at the dirt with his trowel, turning over the sandy topsoil and showing Kraglin the dark, dank clay beneath.

“Whassit look like?”

“Like them flowers’re fightin’ back – hah – hah – hah- _choo!_ ”

Yondu shot him an amused look. He scooched around to attack the weeds from a new angle. “Nature still yer biggest enemy?”

Kraglin, along with the other orphans at Lord Saal’s Home for Foundling Boys, had been raised in a high-rise tower block. His only access to wildlife had been dead sewer-vermin after a pipe flush, whose bleached white bodies fell apart when poked with sticks. 

Kraglin pulled a face. Yondu chuckled, ducking back to his work.

The weeds were hardy things. Spiral fans of leaves stole sunlight from the lower plants, sapping their energy, flourishing on composted corpses. The strong ate the weak – Kraglin could respect that. If Yondu wanted to tip that balance, he might as well try shouting back a solar flare.

“Quill's fine,” he said, because Yondu wouldn't ask. “Rest of the team too. Saw 'em at the last gatherin'.”

He was very careful not to mention what sort of a gathering it had been. Yondu, no fool,  addressed his question to his cabbage crop:

“They givin' Ogord hell?”

“Doin' their best sir.”

“Huh.”

Silence fell again, bar the scrape of the trowel and the wet crunch of roots. Kraglin could smell 'em, and Yondu beside.

He'd always been _aware_ of how his captain smelled, oftentimes to the point of discomfort when Yondu forgot to shower. But never so acutely, and never with such intensity. It was as if Kraglin could pick out the patches on Yondu's skin where those familiar Ravager-reeks of booze and radiation had been replaced by the grubbiness of a hard day's labor...

The scritching trowel stopped. Yondu was looking at him oddly, and Kraglin only realized how close he'd prowled when he saw his shadow blocking the red sluice of sunset across Yondu's scarred spine.

He had to blink at the backs of his fingers to reassure himself of their color. When had he hopped the fence? Kraglin knew he was tired – work stress did that to you. But surely he hadn't yet reached the sleepwalking stage?

Thankfully, the fence remained intact. Yondu's expression was equally reassuring – a smirk, rather than a scowl. Nevertheless, he didn't turn to the outstretched hand, which hovered an inch from his cheek as Kraglin's styrofoam lump of a brain struggled to work out where the missing time had gone.

“Told ya to wait," he said, turning back to his work.

He laid his vegetable patch in haphazard squares. Most crops had their own cordoned area, enlivened by the occasional oddity: a tomato among the runners, corn and kale intermingling, a purple pumpkin sharing space with a root Kraglin couldn't identify offhand, and probably wouldn't be able to with aid of a botany book either. That was what happened when you invited a baby tree to help sow.

Thank flark the brat wasn't old enough to pollinate.

Kraglin only swung by once a month, what with his busy captainly schedule. The thought of leaving Yondu alone for the interim, tending to his garden like a hermit, sat uncomfortably. Luckily, gone were the days when Yondu could count his allies on three and a half fingers (Tullk, Oblo, Kraglin, and Quill, when the little shit wasn't busy stealing multi-million-unit orb-retrieval jobs). He had a plethora of Guardians to choose from.

One of which had passed through recently. Kraglin pictured him skulking outside at night, twitching his ears to ensure Yondu was snoring before cocking his leg...

“Rat been here?” he asked, discreetly covering his nose.

Yondu nodded. “Every other week. Twig's passed out in the hut. Rat dumps the brat here, skedaddles to his day-job and swings by next decacycle to pick him up. I’m a glorified babysitter.”

He sounded worryingly happy at the prospect. Kraglin didn't like it.

He also didn't like not having Yondu all to himself – but he squashed the jealousy. They were more alone than they had been during all three decades of Yondu's tenure as Ravager boss, when there’d been a snooping crew to contend with, not to mention nosy Terrans who poked their heads into the shower block at inopportune moments and asked _hey, why're you hugging?_

Compared to that, a toddling tree was practically a fly on the wall.

But Kraglin didn't come here to be ignored in favor of a garden. He had something he needed to say. A lot of things, in fact. 

Best start with the easy ones.

“Boss,” Kraglin said, after clearing his throat three times to rid it of its coating of botanical alluvium. “I missed ya.”

Yondu scoffed. But Kraglin knew he was listening.

“I miss ya when I wake up in the morning,” he continued. "Miss ya when I eat my breakfast. An'- an' I miss ya whenever somebody calls me cap'n.”

His voice choked softly in his chest – just the pollen, he was sure.

Yondu said nothing. But when Kraglin dropped his palm on his shoulder, he didn't shrug him off.

The evening light struck low across the forest, dragging the shadows into indigo skidmarks. They flowed liquid across the clearing, the garden, and the curved bow of the _Warbird_ at its opposite end. Days and nights span fast here – half the length of cycles on the _Quadrant,_ which, like most ships in the system, aligned its chronometers to Galactic Central Time.

Yondu didn't have much of a sleep schedule. He conked out as nature willed him. But the rapid sapping of the light, darkness encroaching like the rush of the tide, made Kraglin yawn.

"Missed you,” he repeated, cracking his jaw.

Yondu, smirking at his freshly de-cluttered cabbage patch, gave one knobbly wrist a pat. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Kraglin trailed after him. He walked in Yondu's footsteps, pressing his boots over each imprint of toes and heel on the springy forest floor. It felt so _right,_ following his captain. Shame Yondu wasn't his captain anymore.

They arrived by the brook in short order; it wound near Yondu's _Warbird,_ close by the perimeter fence. Already well-stacked, the fire was set to blaze through the night. The swelter on their backs only made Kraglin more aware of the heat in his skull, around the join where implant met bone.

Yondu crouched on the overhang, toes dug into the grass. The stream swooped around a meander, undercutting the outside of the bend. Wine-dark water babbled and spat as it crossed a jumble of stones, reflecting the occasional glint of firelight.

Yondu hissed at the first chilly splash. It didn't stop him from cupping more, drenching his face and chest, scrubbing under each pit and raking chipped nails over his back. Captains were expected to be _active,_ but if you had a whistle-controlled arrow, maintaining peak fitness held little appeal. The toils of self-sufficient life showed themselves in Yondu's shape: belly reduced, shoulders blockish and squared. Kraglin, whose metabolism maintained his string-bean figure regardless of how much he fed it, envied the ease with which Yondu put on muscle.

Twilight curled around them, smoky-soft. It overlaid everything, muting colors to purple and silver. Kraglin traced the droplet as it ventured down Yondu's back, zigzagging from scar to scar. Yondu twitched at the ghost-light touch. Those twitches - microscopic spasms, barely visible in the half-light - tickled Kraglin's fingertip and changed the droplet's quivering path. The shining bead curved close to his spine before branching away again, until it finally settled, puddled in one of the symmetrical dimples on Yondu's lower back.

 

“Mind if I join?" Kraglin unzipped his jumpsuit, peeling the sweat-starched leather to his waist.

Yondu shrugged, starting on his belt clasp. “Sure thing, cap'n.”

If he noticed Kraglin's flinch, he didn't mention it. Just hooked his pants over the arches of his feet, and lowered them one by one into the stream.

 

* * *

  

The slow card of water between his fingers. The icy rush over his shins.

They sat naked, Yondu between Kraglin's legs, blue back to a white front, shivering at every handful poured over him.

“We can stop, if yer cold,” said Kraglin, not for the first time, rubbing the bobbly gooseflesh on Yondu's side. But captain or otherwise, Yondu was nothing if not stubborn. He shifted, slick against Kraglin's wiry chest hair. Tiny scales caught and tugged like he'd snuggled up to velcro.

“An' go to bed grubby? Don't wanna wash the furs.”

Kraglin sniggered. “Frettin' ‘bout laundry, sir? Ain't like you.”

Yondu huffed. He rocked, trying to seat himself more comfortably on the shingle. Pebbles scored Kraglin's thighs, but he wouldn't complain until Yondu did – just as he was willing to lose all feeling below the belt, body heat leaching to numbness, until Yondu was satisfied. He didn't want to deal with a hypothermic Centaurian though – if Yondu had a notoriously awful bedside manner, he made a far worse patient.

“Seriously, just say the word an' we can go -”

“I ain't got no steam room no more,” Yondu said. “Gotta do clothes and sheets by hand. If they rot, I gotta hunt fresh 'uns – and I ain't got time. Cabbages'll be ripenin' in a few weeks, an' all.”

He sounded so _petulant_ about it. That was the best part. This time, Kraglin's laugh was more a cackle.

When Yondu twisted to elbow him, Kraglin's treasure trail caught under the microscopic scutes on Yondu's lower back. “ _What?_ ”

The sting couldn't dispel Kraglin's grin. Neither could Yondu's scowl. “Ain't nothin',” he said, wiping his sticky nose. “Let's go inside.”

 

* * *

 

 

Twig woke when they entered, stretching like a kitten and knuckling at his eyes. They were his only non-wooden part: large and limpid and more than capable of bending Yondu to their whims.

Kraglin wasn't so inclined to spoil him. He shot the kid an awkward finger-waggle. “Hi.”

“I am Groot,” said Groot.

Kraglin's smile, as big a sham as the prosthetic on his head and the Captain’s Flame over his heart, ticked with the effort of maintenance. “Thas nice.”

“I am Groot.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am Groot.”

“Uh. That’s great, buddy. Um, I'm Kraglin.”

Yondu watched him suffer for a whole minute, leaning against the shell of his hollowed-out _Warbird_. The firelight glanced off his shattered implant like the mirrors on a disco ball. “C'mon, Twig. Leave Mr Sourpuss be.”

Groot immediately lost interest. He scampered over and pounced on Yondu's bare foot – brave, even after a wash – and swarmed his pant leg with surprising dexterity for one so tiny. Yondu caught him at the pocket, plopping him on his shoulder. It seemed a customary spot – Groot latched onto his earlobe, happy as a parrot as Yondu hunkered in front of his secondary cooking fire, selecting the next log to feed.

Overhead, smoke funnelled out a skylight, sawn through the M-ship's hull. She wasn't spaceworthy anymore. The jobs they'd worked, the marks they'd hunted, the hold-ups and the assassinations and the dogfights... Memories, all of them, ingrained in her plating like the crinkles around Yondu’s grin.

Kraglin swallowed his sense of loss as he stared at that smoke-logged ring of sky. Yondu couldn't jet for the stars if he wanted to.

“You hungry, Kraggles?”

Oh yeah. Yondu had no concerns besides where his next meal came from. Simple troubles, easily solved. Nothing like the melee of Ravager politics Kraglin had been thrust into: smoothing ruffled feathers and soothing egos as the six most tempestuous captains struggled to reform their council…

He didn't come here to think about work, and he certainly didn't come here to rub his grudge over Yondu for dropping him in the lurch like that. Not that he felt one of those.

“Sure,” he said, mimicking Yondu's casual posture (and wincing as his crest cracked off the wall). “I could eat.”

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments and kudos, guys. Comments and kudos! Thank you so, _so_ much to everyone who leaves them. A massive amount of effort went into this fic. It's so nice to know I'm not shouting at nobody.**


	3. Down By the River in the Full Moon Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Decided to split up my mega chapters.... Partially for readability, mostly so I could fit in more 'Fishing in the Dark' lyrics.**

The broth simmered in a pan by the fire. That was impressive. Yondu'd always been the sort of guy who could roast you a decent leg of meat over an up-flipped thruster engine, but until recently, giving him ingredients and asking him to sling them together resulted in far too much experimental tampering for the result to be edible.

This soup – a critter so juicy it bewildered evolution, chopped with garden vegetables and swimming in its own marinade – wasn't half bad. It was actually liquid, for one thing, rather than a gelatinous blob, which meant...

“Peter's girl been givin' ya lessons?”

Yondu gulped his scalding mouthful. He grimaced as it burned all the way down. “ _Gamora_? She’s about gotta handle on tellin' under-ripe yaro root from fresh.”

“Then how...” Kraglin lifted his spoon. He let the soup splatter; oily drops running like amoeba in a petri dish.

Yondu shrugged. “Drax ain't a bad chef, for such a big lug.”

“Drax?” He didn't mean to sound so surprised, but it was difficult to imagine that bulky wall of muscle perched on a stool to grind protein-cubes to powder. “Well, I mean, we both know it weren't Peter...”

Considering the amount of time the young Quill spent in the galley, either snaffling gooey energy bars from the pantry or on washing-up duty in penance, sudsing the dirty crockery that thundered down the mess hall chutes, you'd think he'd have picked up a few skills. But no – if the majority of meals Yondu created wound up a noxious purple, Peter's efforts tended towards carbonized.

“I am Groot,” muttered Groot. Yondu decanted water into a halved nut for him, the outer shell of which was almost as fuzzy as Kraglin. He didn't thwap the back of Groot’s head like he used to when Quill backchatted – although the poke he dealt his crown still gave the twig a dunking.

“Aw, shuddit.”

“What?” Kraglin rested his spoon on the bowl side. He'd been hungry when he started, but for some reason, his appetite waned. He scooped bouncy meat and squishy vegetables from one cheek to the other with his tongue. Strange. Soup was his favorite, after all. “You guys’re acting weird.”

“I am Groot.” Groot turned to Kraglin, batting Yondu's finger when he pressed it over his mouth. “I am Groot, I am Groot.”

The cooking fire was small and tame, only used for roasting skewers. Yondu had to stoke it occasionally, prodding the embers before they could cool in a grey-white heap. In contrast, the outside bonfire whirled in bacchanalic fervor, flames roaring over tinder and kindling, infecting the larger, damper logs beneath. Shadows glanced around the trio, playing peekaboo between their bowls, chased by the rich orange glow. There was more than enough light for Kraglin to see Groot's cheeky grin.

“I. Am. Groot!”

“Stoppit,” Yondu repeated, sharper.

Ooh. Kraglin  _liked_ this. “Whas he sayin'?”

“Nothin'!”

“I am Groot!”

“Sure looks like he's sayin' somethin' from here.”

“I am Groot, I am Groot.”

“He's sayin' I'm mighty spry for my years, is all. An' that if ya don't finish that soup, he will.”

Groot shook his head. Kraglin treated Yondu to an elbowing, earning a loose-balled fist to the gut that made him slop broth over his crossed legs. Oddly, he didn't think he'd miss it. “Liar.”

The fist transferred to his scalp. It ground lighter than usual; Yondu couldn't fit his knuckles between Kraglin's temple and the prosthetic. “Ya need to learn respect for yer elders, boy.”

Groot capered, clapping his hands. “I am Groot!”

“Shaddup! I ain't!”

Usually, Kraglin found heat soothing. He considered it a luxury to drag down his zipper – to the waist only; there was Groot to think of – and bare his hairy belly to the world. The  _Quadrant_ was many things, but well-insulated wasn't one of them. If they were running on quarter power thanks to engine blow-outs, lack of fuel, or stealth job requirements, thermostatic control was the first part of the life support system to falter. Kraglin had learned from experience to always keep his poncho close to hand.

But now, the blazing fire peppered his mind with shocks. It made focus impossible. Each orange lick snatched his attention, as if some buried instinct mistook it for a predator. Ferocious, savage, deadly.

Why was he thinking like an animal? Kraglin might not be the sharpest multitool on the utility belt, but he liked to hope he’d qualify as a high-sentient life form.

He was Xandarian, born and raised. Citizen of one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy (even if that citizenship had been revoked long before he joined the Ravagers, after an incident involving assault and battery, public nudity, and drunken defecation on a Corps ship). Their people had mastered trans-system space travel. They developed a comprehensive cartography of all registered jump-portals in their quadrant, and invented plasma-age weaponry that could outperform the Kree. There was no reason for him to be afraid of  _fire._

“How do ya,” he said, waving his spoon. “Y'know. Understand what he's sayin'?”

Yondu blinked like he'd asked him why he was blue. Sucking juice from his fingertips, he raised his bowl to his lips, finishing the broth with a noisy slurp, before setting it down with a belch and a pat of his gut. He looked warm, satiated, content – but fey firelight flickered over his cheekbones, shadows clinging to the wells under his eyes. The amber glow from beyond the  _Warbird's_ popped entrance hatch ought to have clashed with his skin tone. Instead it softened it, smoothing out his creases, making him look velvety to the touch.

Kraglin realized he was staring at the cheeky “I am Groot” and the bonk of a miniature wooden foot off his boot. For a moment, he swore something  _else_ accompanied the words. Whatever it was, it wasn’t on any audible register. Concepts flowed too swiftly to grasp, leaving a medley of impressions like the lingering streaks you saw after looking into M-ship headlamps.

 _You, watching,_ and  _him,_ was coupled with  _gross_ and an entirely unnecessary clip of Peter and Gamora making out, as seen from someone whose eye level was far below Kraglin's own.

“You'll know, when ya get it,” said Yondu. His palm grazed Kraglin's hand, close enough to agitate the hairs. Then, in a flash of determination, it dropped on top of it and squeezed, before folding back on Yondu's lap with equal haste. “Ain't no mistakin' when this 'un talks.”

Kraglin thought he understood, just a little.

The soup on his spoon had dried in a granular paste. Kraglin popped it in his mouth and treated Groot to a careful pat. He nuzzled into the caress for all of a second, before smacking his fingers and fleeing to Yondu.

Yondu chuckled. “Behave, brat. If ya ain't nice to yer Uncle Kraggles, I'll tell on ya to Rat.”

Kraglin's nose wrinkled. “'Uncle'?”

“Yeah.” Yondu chugged from the flagon of stream water to wash his soup down. When finished, he wiped his mouth on his arm, and Kraglin's stare clung to that smear as it glossed the corded muscle, glistening a fire-lit tangerine. “Count yerself lucky. I'm grandpa.”

“I am Groot.”

“Says you can be too, if ya really wanna. So’s ya don't sound like my catamite.”

“I am Groot?”

“He don't know what a catamite is.”

“I am Groot.”

“No, I ain't tellin' ya. Ask Quill next time ya see him. Kraglin? Quit laughin'.”

“Yessir.”

The mock-frown rinsed from Yondu's expression. “Hey. Y'don't gotta call me that. Yer cap'n now, remember?”

Kraglin shook his head. “You'll always be my cap'n.”

He expected a leer, maybe an initiation of sex, if he was lucky and Groot adhered to his bedtime. What he got – a scowl – was disappointing.

“No,”  said Yondu. "Krags, I don't want that no more. I told ya, didn't I? I'm over. It's over, it's done, it's through. That life... The Ravagers...”

“You don't gotta explain, Yondu.” The name sounded unfinished, without an honorific. It sat in Kraglin’s mouth, fat as a burnt tongue. He said it again to get used to it - “Yondu?”

“Yeah, cap'n?”

Discomfort prickled. A skewer probed his spine, searching for flesh that wasn't stretched tight to the bone. “Don't call me that.”

“S'what you are.”

“Not to you.”

“Yeah, to me.” Yondu leaned in. His shadow flickered in time with the flames. “Hell, per'aps I oughta start with the chest thumps whenever I see ya.”

Kraglin's soup tasted far too salty. 

He forced himself to swallow. His throat contracted several times to prevent his briney mouthful working its way back up. He set the bowl down, cooked meat bobbing in the gravy, and shook his head when Yondu aimed a questioning shrug.

“M'done.”

“Yer barely halfway through.”

“Yeah. M'done.”

“Yer settin' a fuckin' shitty example for Groot.”

Kraglin snorted.

“What?”

“Nothing, si- Yondu. Anyway, don't he feed off sunlight and water?”

“And candy.” Yondu poked Groot's head. “Lil' tyke. Reckon thas why Rat keeps dumpin' him on me – Quill keeps a sweet stash, and this one keeps sniffin' em out and gorgin' til he pukes.”

He held him so carefully, light enough that the wood grain rubbed his fingertips. When he placed him on his shoulder, Groot draped out, spectator to the fireworks as they consumed log after log. The branches burst in crackling pops, the smoke a tornado, whirling sparks high into the air where they snuffed in the humid night.

Burning logs. Kraglin gulped.

“Uh. M'guessin' we keep him away from that?”

“Ya guess correctly. Twig ain't twigged yet that he's flammable.” Yondu's throaty chuckle verged on a purr. “ _Twigged_. Geddit?”

 

Kraglin crept an inch closer. Then another, bony ass shuffling over the sand-strewn metal floor. He pressed against Yondu, bones digging into meat, and rested his head on his shoulder while Yondu stroked Groot's on the opposite side, mumbling in a low croon.

“Thassit, kiddo. You watch them flames, but never touch them, you understand? Bad things happen to lil' trees what play with fire.”

 

* * *

 

They spent the first night as was custom, wrapped around each other like insulation tubing.

A matter convertor buzzed at the core of the terraformation, pumping fresh groundwater to the surface for every layer of shed leaves. Yondu's skylights permitted the sun during daylight hours. When the dwarf star reached its peak a cover could be tugged across, if you scrambled up the steps hewn into the  _Warbird'_ s slanted wing. That mat was woven in the same patchwork style as Yondu's door hanging and homemade bedclothes. No bells and whistles.

While Kraglin never cared for the first, he missed the latter. He could hold a steady note – enough to activate the yaka – but Yondu was the tuneful one. What cause did Yondu have to whistle now?

Yondu made his nest in what had once been the bunk room: a pod attached to the main living quarter by an airlock, left open so long it rusted that way. The beds had been combined and the porthole window popped out, letting breeze stir the stew of body odor and halitosis that accumulated wherever Yondu slept.

Lying like this, a heavy blue leg kicked over a scrawny white one, they watched the forest side by side.

They floated a long way from any constellations. Their star was a loner, the nearest being forty lightyears centerwards. Things became more spaced out the closer you ventured to Galaxy's Edge, and while Peter and co. established a jump-point besides the asteroid, it still took three days to find its other end, sequestered in the belt around Knowhere. Without it the journey took weeks, even at multi-lightspeed.

If anyone caught wind of this hiding spot, it would still take considerable effort to reach it. Not that Stakar wouldn’t try. If he thought his old friend was alive, he'd snap on his solar wings and zoom here personally.

But for now, their secret was safe. Ogord was none the wiser, and the tenuous sanctuary of Yondu's retirement home remained.

Kraglin wafted the air, stirring residual smoke. Now daylight had dimmed, the snot-bead no longer dangled perpetually from his nostrils. His airways filled and emptied, blessedly clear, the smoke an acrid counterpoint to the moist forest mulch. Yondu's beefy arm looped around Kraglin to keep him crushed to his captain's side.

...It would only be better if captain was still  _captain._ If there wasn't a miniaturized Flora Colossus in his cot under the window. And if, when Kraglin lifted his head to nudge his nose against Yondu's cheek, inhale the scents that seemed sharper and more alien than ever, the prosthetic didn't weigh him down.

Kraglin groaned, flopping against his pillow. He’d fetched his favorite cushion from the cabin on his M-ship, and now he regretted not snatching one of his shimmery thermo-regulation quilts too. He wasn't  _cold,_ but it'd be nice to have something between him and the hide Yondu tugged over them. Judging by the reek, he'd cured it with his own urine.

Yondu didn't mind. He smacked his lips and snorted, and began his usual pre-sleep ritual of turning over five dozen times. Kraglin let Yondu wriggle his arm free and flump on his side.

“M'tired,” he announced.

“Mm,” Kraglin agreed, hand settling on the swell below Yondu's hip. Lied, really. Having his captain's ass against his crotch was no novelty, but the same couldn't be said for having him clean, with no time restraints and no Hostile Proximity klaxon that inevitably blared when they were halfway to climax.

Kraglin saw better in the dark (unlike the other boys from the orphanage, who whimpered when locked in the Naughty Cupboard without a solar cube). Right now, that nocturnal adaptation – wherever in his chequered and never-traced bloodline from whence it might spring – meant Kraglin could make out where the last trickles from the stream had evaporated off Yondu's skin. His eyes didn’t register the colors so much as the heat: streaks of coolness brindling muscle.

Yondu might be a little wrinkly, but he was firmer than Kraglin remembered from those fraught Quill-less months where it'd been a struggle to get him out of bed at the cycle's start. His chest and stomach radiated warmth, firm-veering-soft and oh-so-good to squeeze...

Yondu squirmed away. “ _Tired,_ Krags. You try diggin' a garden all day an' see if yer up for nookie. Plus, Twig's a light sleeper.”

Usually, that would be that. Kraglin might grumble, but he was nothing if not a dutiful mate – or a captain now, although that ached if he thought about it too long. Tonight though, desire eddied in his abdomen, speeding to match his shaky breaths, his rising pulse.

“Please,” he husked. He kissed the scars that pockmarked Yondu's spine, where new flesh sealed the holes left by his sawn-off  _tahlei_. “I need ya.”

A magnanimous huff. “Be quiet then,” whispered Yondu. “An' don'tchu get yer panties in a twist if I start snorin'.” He crooked his lower back, cussing at the click, and rolled to drape a generous thigh over Kraglin's, so his dick skidded across the furl of his ass and the soft folds beyond.

Yondu wasn't wet. Kraglin stuck a finger down there anyway, reaching over Yondu's pecs and stomach, loving the size of him, the weight of him, the soft spill of his cock through his fingers and the cool lips of a cunt beneath. Yondu didn't have bollocks to speak of – the navy sac pinned back, molded to his perineum and petalled neatly down the middle.

Kraglin never asked if Yondu's pussy was vestigial. A bout of experimentation neither of them much liked to discuss had proven contraception unnecessary. But whatever its origins, he boasted a cute cunt in fetching navy blue, which slickened like a Jthuoan slime-worm when you got him going.

Kraglin made a poor job of it. But then again, Yondu didn't help. He was a soporific puddle: melting when Kraglin rubbed his clit, lolling when his jaws cracked around a yawn.

Kraglin scooched in, cock gliding between Yondu's ass cheeks from behind. His puss remained dry, unwelcoming. That was fine. Kraglin was more than happy to jerk it, using Yondu's body as a pillow to muffle harsh pants as his abdomen clenched and his cock rubbed his slit, nudging the flaccid dick on Yondu’s thigh.

Yondu mumbled incoherent nonsense into the crook of his elbow and started to snore. 

Kraglin shrugged. He rubbed himself until he came, milking up to the tip, urging the sloppy white strings over as much of Yondu and as little of the pelt as possible.

It was okay, as orgasms went. But his nostrils quivered, and something deep in his mind growled its dissatisfaction.

He loved the way Yondu smelled. Loved the way he tasted when he licked him, loved the way he squirmed before he came and clung to Kraglin after: a rare yet consistent display of sentiment that endeared him to Kraglin the first night-cycle they shared a bed. And yet...

Here was the thing. Kraglin despised children.

Not maliciously. But he'd grown up as the youngest in his dormitory at the Xandarian orphanage, and the youngest in Yondu's faction for a fair while after. For several years, he'd had no frame of reference when it came to addressing anyone his junior.

When Yondu first picked up Quill, Kraglin got put in charge of the tour – partially because Yondu didn't trust anyone else, mostly because the brat screamed 'mutant!' every time he laid eyes on the captain's blue mug and Yondu had been resisting the urge to strangle him. Kraglin treated him as he would any recruit – stalking from one room to the next, barking their purposes and the basic rules of etiquette associated with their use (bog block says 'out of order'? You don't ignore it. You respect the conspicuous placement of two mismatched boots outside a storage closet unless you want an eyeful, and you only ever enter a holotraining room when the light is on green, so you don't interrupt a firing session and wind up with an extra wind hole).

It was only when the brat sat down on the floor, bewildered from the information overload, that Kraglin realized he was out of his depth.

He changed tactics, but all attempts to baby talk Quill were even less well-received. Not having the patience to trawl through the middle ground between those extremes, Kraglin pawned him off on Oblo and Tullk, who didn't seem to mind the brat's existence – or at the very least, never got caught preparing to flambé him while captain was planetside.

Kraglin demanded a lot out of life. Food, shelter, provisions for his men, his captain safe and happy and filling his arms with smelly blue. But he never tallied  _progeny_ onto that list. When his and Yondu’s early experiments bore no fruits, Kraglin had been grateful.

So why, as his last gasps gusted over Yondu's nape, making him twitch and huff in his sleep, did Kraglin’s brain try to tell him that he needed to fuck somebody fertile?

 

* * *

 

Sleep eluded him. When it finally crawled in, it was almost as disappointing as the orgasm.

Kraglin woke to an empty bed. His hands found hide, endless folds of it, which he gathered to him until his nails scratched the grubby metal floor. The crest hung heavy and sore. Kraglin rolled, shuddering at the sharp compress of bones on his organs. He couldn't even  _smell_ him.

Miasma fogged the air – savory and a touch rancid. It muddled his senses, banishing the lingering hints of  _Yondu,_ as well as the pelts, the garden dirt, the wood smoke, the pollen, and the blinding lance from his prosthetic.

The stink stunk. Strange. Foreign.

Kraglin didn't like it.

He creaked to sit, wiping gungy eyes. It wasn't even midday, but the pollen count soared high above tolerable levels. Kraglin felt like he'd taken a shower under a snot-gland on Knowhere.

“Yondu?”

His voice quavered pathetically. With the crust filming his lashes, his vision was too blurry to see – but Yondu was unmistakable as he sauntered toward him. He carried Groot on his shoulder, and two piping hot fish on a plate.

Kraglin's vision cleared. Only it wasn't his vision, not really, because the colors skewed like he was looking through an infra-red camera. Yondu's body formed a map of maroons. He tinged violet at the extremities and red around the core, while the fish were twin supernovae, blazing with the intensity of an M-ship's backburners.

Kraglin pressed a hand to his temple. The implant  _ached._

“Y'alright?” he slurred.

Yondu squinted. “The hell wouldn't I be?”

He saw the streak winding from Kraglin's left nostril and snickered, squatting in front of him and wafting the fish far too close to his face.

"C'mon, up and at 'em, sneezy. Ya might be allergic to nature, but me an' Twig made ya breakfast...”

Too much. The heat, the closeness, the godawful pong of that fish.

Sure, on some plane of existence, Kraglin knew he  _liked_ the stuff. But smoke clung to the filleted meat, and it looked bloodless and plastic and  _unreal_ , and he wanted it  _away..._

“Flark,” said Yondu, wringing out his hand. Fish steaks lay scattered around him. A few plopped onto his lap, skewers like javelins hurled into the earth. Steadying Groot one-handed, Yondu scooped 'em off and plopped them on the plate before the heat went from sizzling to scalding. “If ya wanted rabbit, ya coulda said.”

Kraglin's knuckles stung. He pieced together what had happened. Bone-white fish flakes stood out against the dirt. A crack split the wooden serving plate like it had been struck by lightning.

“Ya made me breakfast?” he croaked, far too late.

Yondu rolled his eyes. He salvaged what he could, blowing off the dust and sucking his burnt fingers. “Nice of ya to notice.”

“Crap."

Kraglin shrunk, pulling the pelt around him. The stuffiness swiftly became unbearable. Especially with that  _smell_ \- a malodorous brew of smoke and ash and fish skin. It sunk loamy fingers into his lungs, infecting him like fungal spores. He couldn't be rid of it, no matter how hard he shook his head.

Yondu watched him curiously, Groot tugging his pierced lobe. “Uh. Y'alright there, Krags?” He rotated his hand like it pained him, and while he had yet to start bandying accusations, this kinda  _had_ been Kraglin's fault.

“Lemme,” he said, reaching for his wrist.

Yondu allowed the touch. He set Groot down, steering him towards the garden with a pat and an exchange of “I am Groot?” and “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

“Quill's comin' by again, end of the next decacycle.” Kraglin rubbed the heel of Yondu's hand. It smelt like fire and fish oil, and dirt gathered under the nails. He forced the bile down and concentrated on kneading the trowel-calluses, hard enough for Yondu to feel. “Says he's been missin' yer ugly mug.”

“Huh. He better be. Can't let the brat run rampant much longer.” They fell silent, listening to the whoops as Groot chased toothy bird-things around Yondu's cabbage patch. Yondu followed the bright spill of light through the door hatch. “Hey. Quill's keepin' shtum, yeah?”

“He will do as long as ya want him to, sir.”

Quill was a notoriously bad secret-keeper. Over the course of one drunken evening, he blurted that it was him, not Kraglin, who knocked a trinket off Yondu's chair arm while dancing about the Bridge, and that Yondu stuffed a dead rat in Kraglin's dormitory pillow in recompense, which went unnoticed until his bunk-stack mates complained about the smell, because Kraglin made amends for the crime he’d never committed by plowing his cap'n hard and deep against his mattress for the better part of a weekend.

Alcohol loosened his lips. A honeytrap would have him spilling beans, lentils, and any other legumes he had to hand. The girl wouldn't even have to climb aboard; if she flashed a tit, Quill'd be too busy slathering over himself to remember what he was and wasn't allowed to share.

But if Stakar had no reason to doubt, he'd have no reason to interrogate. And if he had no reason to interrogate, he had no reason to sic Aleta and her girls on the poor kid. Kraglin ran his nails along Yondu’s love-lines.

“Reckon he’ll bring Gamora?”

“Reckon he'll bring Rat?”

Kraglin smiled. “Ya sure do like that rodent.” Yondu stole his hand back so he could fold his arms. Kraglin backed down, and kept his chuckles to the privacy of his own head. “Course not. My mistake.”

“Yeah,” muttered Yondu, helping himself to a mouthful of Kraglin's rejected fish. He spoke between chews, letting Kraglin see the mashed fillets coating his tongue. “Yer mistake.”

However, when Kraglin got on his knees to apologize – not in his favorite way, but to pick up the rest of the fish, nose shrivelling and belly rebelling the whole while – Yondu helped.

Kraglin felt hungry, that was the odd part. His stomach lining rubbed, acid sloshing empty. If he didn't put something in there soon, he'd start digesting himself. But the fish smelled unappetizing, as did the berries Yondu fetched him a bushel of, to reward them for their lazy morning's work.

“Suit yerself,” said Yondu when Kraglin refused them. He tossed one into his mouth, gulping without bothering to chew, and spoke around the lump in his throat - “I'm expectin' ya to help me fix the perimeter fence out on the opposite side of the garden. Had a boar run through not two nights ago, an' I need someone to hold the stake in place while I hammer. Rat offered last time he was here, but he's kinda on the short side, an' – Hey. Are ya listenin'?”

Kraglin nodded. Hunger made him dozy; it took him several seconds to realize that he hadn't absorbed a word of Yondu's speech, and several more to wrap words around the primal yearn in his skull.

_He looks kinda tasty, don't ya think?_

Kraglin snorted. Cannibalism wasn't unknown to Ravagers; if your thrusters blew lightyears from the nearest jump-portal, the first few to croak got shovelled into the stew pot, and if they didn't die fast enough they'd be helped along their way. But Kraglin was nowhere near that desperate yet. He'd gnaw off his own leg before he started on Yondu's.

Yondu really  _was_ looking at him strangely now. “What'chu smilin' at, idjit? I'm tellin' ya how I need ya all fit an' strong so I can make the most of yer spry young body. So ya need food in that gut, goddit?”

Kraglin patted his tummy, self-conscious. His was a strange and not especially attractive body type, when measured against conventional standards. His limbs stretched like a spider’s, but his stomach bulged as if all his organs had been squeezed into it, the dents between his ribs fitted to a giant’s hand. But while the majority of his body mass might be concentrated on the apple around his middle, that didn't mean it wasn't growling.

“I'll fetch myself somethin',” he offered after they'd disposed of the fish over the fence. Then, with a hint of tease - “Ya don't gotta wait on me just because I'm cap'n now, y'know.”

“Huh. An' here was me thinkin' you'd like the princess treatment.”

“Jackass.”

“Dick.”

“Wait.” Kraglin held up a finger. “Remember how ya always made me call ya 'sir' when I insulted ya?”

“So?”

“Does that mean you gotta do the same to me, now?”

Yondu's grin slunk salacious. He leaned in, after slanting eyes at the garden to ensure Groot was out of earshot. “D'you want me to?”

Kraglin, as usual, bit off more than he could chew. His prosthetic burned –  _Yondu's_ prosthetic. A drill bit that churned his greymatter whenever he tried to consolidate thoughts. 

“Gotta go,” he blurted, scrambling to his feet. Birds cawed outside, divebombing Groot as he pulled their tail feathers and pelted them with dirt.

Yondu thumbed at the treeline. “Uh, ya need to piss?”

“Nah. Hungry, remember?” 

 _Food._ The prospect energized him. Kraglin bounced foot to foot, casting longing looks along the boar track before forcing himself to focus on Yondu. The arrow, which he'd grudgingly strapped to his waist, jigged against his hip. Saliva puddled in his cheeks; he had to suck 'em so as not to dribble.

“I'll be back soon, don'tchu worry.”

“Yer goin' into the forest? Without me?” Yondu's turn to rise. He did so with impressive grace for a guy of his years: only one click (and accompanying curse). “Shit, boy. I know it all seems nice an' cushy round these parts, but we ain't the only meat-eaters on this rock. If ya start sneezin', you’ll draw every nasty in the area…”

“I won't,” Kraglin promised. He meant it too. He couldn't pinpoint when the change occurred, but the mist cleared from his vision and putty no longer stuffed his lymph nodes.

Everything was clearer. Sharper. That inexplicable heat sensitivity crept over his vision, and when Kraglin inhaled, he found he could parse each local scent from Yondu – tainted by the foetid odor of his breakfast – to the birds, and the little mammals scuttling through their burrows a foot below them, and -

There. The boar. He lumbered down his forest trail, tusks at the ready for any enterprising predator.

Kraglin liked a challenge.

“I'll be fine,” he said again, testing the stretch of the tendons in his jaw. “Be back soon.”

Yondu reared away. “Holy shit. When d’ya get dental mods?”

“What?” No time for that. Kraglin's prey snuffled further off, rootling through the undergrowth in search of fungi and mice. Kraglin shook his head. “Gotta go,” he told Yondu.

He all but sprinted out the door, hurdling the fence without pausing and sending birds wheeling up into the sky.

 

* * *

 

 

“Stick to the trails cause I ain't comin' to pull yer ass out the swamp! An' if ya hear a sound like a screamin' banshee, run fast as fuck in the opposite direction, 'cause I ain't fightin' no bilgesnipe either!”

Those words were spoken mostly to himself. Kraglin was gone.

Oh well. No time to worry about his mate. The squabbling morass of beaks and feathers descended on his vegetable patch, Groot taking cover under a pumpkin.

“Hell no,” Yondu growled. Snatching the cracked wooden plate, he arranged his drooping pants and stomped outside to thwack as many of the airborne blighters as he could. “Geddoff my cabbages!”

Those he stunned would bulk out tonight's soup. Kraglin would appreciate that. Soup and low-gravity environments didn’t mix well, so the dish constituted something of a delicacy among spacefarers. Last time the Guardians visited, Yondu had asked Drax for a recipe, and coerced the big guy into teaching him to cook it without boiling the pan dry. Kraglin rejected the last attempt, but hey. Learning process.

He spurned the morning's meal too.

Honestly, Yondu didn't get it. If someone offered  _him_ breakfast in bed, he'd lap up the attention. 

But hey. Everyone reacted to change in different ways. Some grew allotments and hung up their leathers. Others had prosthetics implanted and invested in a row of second teeth, which lined Kraglin's mouth like a lamprey's.

There were worse coping mechanisms, and Yondu never said _no_ to a bit of biting in the bedroom.

As for the red tint to Kraglin's eyes, as his nostrils flared and he sprung from Yondu's cabin like an unleashed Orloni in the baiting ring? Just the morning light, that was all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments & kudos make the writer happy x**


	4. Fallin' in Love in the Middle of the Night

Kraglin caught his boar. How? Well, that was the question. Must've dozed out from the hunger.

He remembered flashes – twisted, malformed, distorted. He could've sworn that his hands beat the bracken in cadence with his feet. That the boar screamed in high piggy squeals, trampling ferns and bursting through vine-strung bowers. That its tusks gored Kraglin's arm as he drove his fangs through the baggy flesh round its throat and vigorously shook. That the its arteries emptied over him, weakening with each dying pulse...

But none of that  _actually_  happened. Just the rumblings of a recently-fed brain, struggling to make sense of the blood coating Kraglin's face and hands (normal, pink hands, no claws or indigo fur) and the new gashes in his jumpsuit.

He'd... been tangled in branches, that was all. The boar overheard him, and discovering its pursuer trussed and helpless, it lowered its tusks at Kraglin's belly and charged.

Kraglin wrestled his arm between them, hence the new scratch marks, and discharged his pistol in its throat. There. Simple. A rational explanation for everything.

Everything except the bite marks, where the boar had been mauled like the victim of a feral dog pack. And the ugly gouge along Kraglin's forearm, starting at the elbow and tearing lengthways across the muscle, which shrunk as he watched, losing its angry flush and filling with new skin.

New  _blue_ skin.

Kraglin rubbed his eyes. Fuck. The boar must've been chowing down on hallucinogenic mushrooms. No wonder the Nova Corps advised against eating uncooked alien meat.

He considered the carcass. It had been stripped, albeit more messily than usual. Then again, Kraglin had been more concerned with filling his gut than silver service. Enough remained for a small parcel, and Yondu'd appreciate the gift – Kraglin's heart fluttered at the thought of pressing raw kill to his partner's lips, glossing them with rich red heart-blood. But if the meat made him see shit, it was best left to the bilgesnipe.

Kraglin rested his hand on the nearest trunk for stability. The bloody print clung to the bark. He peered down himself, sniffling as the hay fever crept in.

Strange; the adrenaline must've held his usual reaction to the pollen swirls at bay. Best he find a stream to sponge off in before heading back to camp. He couldn't have Yondu fretting about how much of this blood was his.

 

* * *

 

The rapid spin of night to day and back again disorientated him. Kraglin buzzed over-energized, no way near ready for slumber. Yet his mind dulled, half asleep, lulled by the darkening outside sky as lightning bugs spilled from their haunts like sparks from a blown bonfire.

He lounged in the  _Warbird_ , drapes lowered and skylight closed in the vain hope of creating a pollen-free pocket. No such luck. The snuffles returned with a vengeance, as if his boar-baiting jaunt weakened his immune system in penance for those perfect, half-recalled minutes of stalking, chasing, sinking his teeth into a squealing throat -

Huh. Whatever fungi the boar'd been munching on, they were potent.

Kraglin sighed, dropping a bony hand over his eyes. He couldn't loaf around stewing in his thoughts, but equally, he couldn't sleep. That left only one option: pester Yondu.

Today was the last of Twig's stay. Kraglin let them spend the morning in each other's company, seeing as neither knew how long it would be before the tribulations of parenthood dragged on Rocket's furry shoulders, and he roped Yondu into another babysitting stint. However, evening had by now crawled in. The brat couldn’t hog his cap'n all cycle – Groot wasn't the only one here on limited time.

“You could always stay in yer ship a bit,” Yondu said, when Kraglin announced his exit from the hut with a sneeze. Groot jumped from his perch on the middle rung of the fence, prevented from toppling by the automatic snap of Yondu's hand. Yondu steadied him and kept speaking at the same tempo, as if he hadn't noticed the interruption: “Don't want'chu leakin' all over my garden.”

He knelt besides his vegetable patch, tending to the tall runners that wound around the fence posts. What swelled in those purple pods, Kraglin had no idea, but Yondu would probably feed them to him, on the basis that you couldn't dislike something until you'd tried it.

Sweat painted constellations over Yondu's skin, salt beads crusting his muscles. Kraglin hummed happily; his eyes explored where his hands would follow. Scars and meat and curves, a plush ass under the leather and wet puss clenched for a licking. His mind purred as boar meat stewed in his belly. The hunger mutated into a hot, spicy twist in his abdomen, a tingle that spread with every thud of his heart.

“Can't do this to ya if I'm on my ship,” he mumbled, and dipped his tongue into  a pointed blue ear.

Yondu pulled a face. Then a much more exaggerated one, when he met Groot's curious eyes. “Kraglin. C'mon, quit it. We got one night before Rat arrives, ya impatient shit.”

Kraglin wasn't sure he  _could._ Need swelled, and his cock copied it. Yondu boasted two holes of fuckable size – discounting his mouth; they declared blowjobs too much of a risk after Kraglin ran out of excuses for staggering into the medbay clutching a slice that corresponded to the chip in Yondu's front teeth.

He grunted as Kraglin shunted in, sealing the gap between them, kneeling wide-legged so that he could slot his crotch under Yondu's. Kraglin ground up, tight and fierce and demanding, hooking Yondu's belt loops to pin him...

“Krags!”

Yondu launched his elbow behind him, aiming for Kraglin's nose.

“What?” Kraglin lurched away. “The hell was that for, boss -”

“Don't call me that! An' I oughta be askin' you! Fuck, look at the kid. He's freakin'!”

And he was. Groot stared at him, over the wall of Yondu's shoulder. Eyes huge. Mouth downturned.

Completely and utterly terrified.

Kraglin was just as shocked as Yondu when Groot sat on the fence with a woody thunk and started to cry.

 Kraglin winced at the loud wails – then winced harder at Yondu's glare. "What?”

This time, the elbow connected.

“Jackass!” Yondu seethed. He scooped Groot up, letting him cower in his hands, eyes scrunched tight and face turned far from Kraglin.

What the hell? If there was one gift Kraglin never mastered, it was menace. Creepy, that he could do – mostly by accident when he looked at people for too long or forced too-wide smiles that stretched the skin of his face like a mask. But not  _scary._

“I – I don't understand,” he tried, reaching for Yondu only to be met with a blue scarred back. When he stroked that, Yondu stood, shouldering past. He cradled Groot, making churring comfort-noises in the back of his throat, and swaggered into the hut without another word.

Did he expect Kraglin to follow him? Probably. Did he want him to? Probably not.

Yondu no longer outranked him. Technically speaking, Kraglin had every right to barge in there, wielding his captain's title like a club. But certain social situations were immune to that trump card. Kraglin didn't fancy sleeping on his ship for the rest of the week.

He sighed, and settled down to wait.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dawn cracked fast as a windscreen in hard-vac. The star once again crested its peak. Kraglin, who'd made the mistake of shutting his eyes – there was something soporific about this place; or perhaps his body just expended extra energy on staving off allergens – pried them open as the cool shadow fell across him.

“Hey,” he croaked, shading his face.

The sun beat directly above them. Yondu had to step close for his shadow to touch Kraglin at all: a dark little kiss. Light poured through the irregular peaks and valleys of Yondu's implant, brilliant red. “How's the Twig?”

Yondu quit looming. He slumped by Kraglin's side, sat perpendicular with his legs kicked across the doorway, feet wiggling at the opposite frame. Kraglin's own lanky limbs would have stretched from one side to the other. Describing Yondu as  _cute,_ even in the confines of his own head, was practically suicidal – not that it stopped him.

“Kiddo's fine. Bit spooked, but it can't've been by you. Couldn't get much outta him, cept that what he saw was blue and had big red eyes.” At Kraglin's questioning nudge, he snorted. “I  _know._  I already asked – but nope, not me. Darker, 'pparently. Nasty lookin' – he said it had worse teeth.”

He sounded miffed, as if it was a competition. But regardless, a predator snooping around Yondu's shack could cause problems. Kraglin touched the arrow.

“Uh. So, d'you want me to head out with the blaster pistol, or -”

“Nah.” Yondu waved a lazy hand. “First thing I did was check that bioscanner. Yer signature’s a bit glitchy, but there was only ever three of us in the area. Cept the lil' things – birds and bunnies and centipedes an' the like. Lunch, not predators.”

Kraglin slumped, relieved. “Just his imagination then.”

“Yeah. Kids, huh?” The silence thrummed warm now, drowsy from the beat of the sun. Kraglin, exposed against the  _Warbird's_ half-buried flank, glanced at Yondu's spot: tucked in the doorway, out of the glare. “Room for another? I'm startin' to peel.”

Yondu tucked up, creating space for Kraglin to squirm in opposite. He did so, and extended both legs in a mirror of Yondu's former position, proving that yes, his soles did brush the metal.

Yondu smirked. He hooked his calves over the top, slouching so his neck crooked against the doorframe. His ass wedged between Kraglin's knees.

“Rat's comin' today,” he reminded Kraglin, raking along the nearest shin. The leather offered some protection, but Yondu's talons grew to natural points, and Kraglin shivered happily at the scrape. “Then you an' me get ourselves some alone time.”

Kraglin's cock was misbehaving again. So was his heart, and his lungs, and his hands, which curled as if they clutched the hips of an ass-up Centaurian, swinging him back and forth over his prick.

Or perhaps, as if they were buried in the coarse blue fur of a female...

Yondu rubbed the outside of Kraglin's thigh, near the top where it joined his hipbone. Then he swung his leg back between Kraglin's and tested Kraglin's groin with the grubby blue ball of his foot.

“Save this for later,” he purred. He flexed his foot, and Kraglin's thighs fell helplessly wider. The clonk of the prosthetic against the doorframe jarred him, but not enough to lurch him out of the moment as cheeky toes groped the bulge, heel mashing on his balls. Cheeky,  _prehensile_  toes, designed for scampering up tree trunks. And apparently, playing footsie.

“Is it l-later yet?”

“Idjit.” But his voice roughened with fondness, not frustration. Kraglin supposed this was the apology for snapping at him earlier.

Yondu wormed so far down his wall that he lay practically flat, leg crooked at an awkward angle. He stopped squishing Kraglin's dick, not without a little goodbye press that had Kraglin catching his lip between his teeth and moaning so enthusiastically they both cocked their heads in case there followed an inquisitive 'I am Groot'.

For once, the universe span in their direction. Nothing but the rustle of the boughs, and Kraglin's sharp piqued breath.

Yondu cracked a grin. He wrapped his bent leg around Kraglin's waist, the other off to one side. Kraglin wasn't flexible enough to bend forwards and kiss him, not without some manoeuvring, but Yondu pushed up on his elbows to assist, and it just went to show that teamwork was never to be underestimated.

 

* * *

 

 

Rocket arrived without much fanfare. His speedster-ship plopped down outside the garden.

Although Groot shot Kraglin the occasional chary glance, he’d recovered enough to festoon Yondu with a lei of self-grown flowers. Yondu bore his garland with dignity. He grinned when Kraglin tried to kiss him, only to be struck by a violent sneezing fit.

“Kraglin-repellent,” he joked, seating Groot among his adornments. “Like – whassit. That thing Quill used to say scared off vamp-ees. Garlic.”

“Hilarious,” said Kraglin, although the mucus made it hard to tell.

He snorted, head tipped back to dislodge the gunge, and caught the tail-end of Groot’s smile. He still flinched when Kraglin made to pat him. Kraglin chewed his cheek while Yondu scooped the twig off his shoulder, swaddling him between big blue hands, a balustrade of fingers on each side.

Groot must feel so safe. So protected. Of course, it was an illusion – armed only with his physical strength and ingenuity, Yondu was far from the formidable fighter he'd once been. It would be so very easy for Kraglin to -

Whistle him through. Not rip out his throat. That would be messy, and taste disgusting, and – ick.

Plus, there was that whole business where if Kraglin saw his cap'n die in front of him, he’d follow him down or go mad trying.

Morbid thoughts clustered like flies, until Rocket popped the cockpit off his craft. For once he left his armaments on ship, trusting their early warning system and Yondu's arrow – Kraglin's, now – to keep the lot of them safe.

Big step for such a small guy. He scrunched his snout to stop the cackles as he strolled towards them, taking in Yondu's new floral accessories and Kraglin's drippy nose.

Yondu, to his credit, didn't wrench the wreath from around his neck, as he might've done a year ago. He slouched against the fence with a welcoming smirk.

“See somethin' funny, Rat?”

Rocket let the laugh overflow. "Oi, Kraggles – you got a holo-cam? We oughta immortalize this for posterity. Could hang it on the  _Milano_ wall...”

Yondu jerked away. He glowered as if Rocket was gonna whip out a Polaroid – one of those clunky Terran things you found on junker stalls, souped beyond recognition by glowing plasma coils and solar cells.

Kraglin stepped back, hands upraised. “Not that, uh. I would. Low profile and all.”

“Right,” Rocket drawled. He rubbed his whiskers, peeping apologetically at Yondu from the black rings of his bandit mask. “Yeah. Yer secret's safe with us, Blue. No pictures.”

Yondu relaxed. His grin slunk back like it had never left. He looked happy, content.

So what rubbed Kraglin the wrong way? That Yondu had to rely on others, rather than being the toughest jackass in the quadrant?

Or was it jealousy? After all, this was the first time since the Glory Days with Stakar that Yondu trusted someone other than Kraglin or Quill, without having blackmail to hold over their head or a whistling incentive.

“Don'tchu wanna collect yer sproglet?” He nodded to the woody lump under Yondu's ear.

Rocket's whiskers twitched. His nostrils did the same: flaring and shrinking with a wet black glint. His ears flattened against his skull, and he took a slow step closer.

“Don't freak out,” he said.

Groot immediately started to bawl. Rocket massaged his temples.

“Typical.”

Yondu ran the back of his nail over Groot's head. “Whassup?”

“I just got a blast of  _predator,_ thas what. Somethin' nasty.” Rocket risked a glance over his shoulder. His shoulders pinched in, shrinking him smaller than ever.

 _Practically bitesize,_ Kraglin's brain supplied.

“I'm thinkin' we should, uh, go inside and check that bioscanner of yours...”

Yondu scrutinized the treeline.The casual shift would be unnoticeable unless you knew what to look for. To Kraglin, it was unmistakable. The lax-but-ready pose, the protective hand cupped over Groot. He even stepped so Rocket was in his shadow – as if he was capable of defending anyone, with the arrow belt slung around Kraglin's waist.

He held Groot in a cage of fingers so he wouldn't be thrown off if they had to sprint. Protective, unthinking, automatic.

Almost...  _motherly._

That was a fucking weird adjective to ascribe to Yondu Udonta, and one that'd earn Kraglin a sock to the nose if he dared say it out loud. But nevertheless. A burr scratched in Kraglin's chest, maturing into a snarl for every moment Rocket occupied his mate's attention. Now it took the chance to dissipate, softening into something else entirely.

Rocket reared back. “Ugh! I think it's turned on.”

Yondu eyed him, incredulous. “You can tell all that from just one sniff?”

“Animal instincts, remember? Now, if you don't wanna be caught in the middle of a bilgesnipe rut…”

Time to skedaddle. But Rocket latched onto Yondu's pant leg before he jogged a retreat.

“Quick,” he whispered. “But whatever you do, don't make it look like you're running.”

The fast-paced shuffle to the hut gave Kraglin time to calm down. Yondu couldn't decide between ushering him and Rocket ahead, or barging in to deposit Groot. Self-sacrificing idjit. Didn't he know Kraglin was supposed to protect  _him?_  

He folded his arms, refusing to cross the threshold until Yondu did.

Yondu sneered up at him. He looked a millisecond from sticking his tongue out. Kraglin did the job for him, cheeky and oddly fearless, for a man who'd just been informed about the potential nearby passage of a bilgesnipe. The pollen count must be messing with his brain – it convinced him he was the biggest predator around.

Yondu chose to be the mature one – a rare occurrence indeed. He stomped into the  _Warbird,_ hand upraised so Kraglin bore the brunt of his one-fingered salute. Kraglin made the most of the opportunity as much as it was presented; he lurched forwards, gluing himself to Yondu's bare back, and helped himself to a handful of ass.

Burrowed in Yondu's neck, Groot risked a peep. Then slammed his eyes shut and started stuttering  _I am Groots_ at such a pace and panic that Kraglin couldn't identify separate words. He used Yondu as a launchpad, jumping to the floor, and staggered backwards with eyes eating up his head until he fell –

Crash. Right into the firepit.

Shocked out of the arousal, Kraglin pulled back.

“The hell?” he asked. Yondu, equally bamboozled, shook his head. Then froze at the wisp of smoke.

He sprinted to the cooking hollow, plunging his hand into the ashes without a care for the heat. He fished Groot out, shaking him rapidly so embers scattered off his barky skin.

Rocket shoved his leg. “The hell, Blue? Put him down!”

“D’you want him to burn up? Shaddup now Rat, I can't make out what he's sayin'...”

It would be too obvious to point out that he only had three options, in one very specific order. Kraglin kept shtum. He scraped the  _Warbird's_ door closed behind them with one last suspicious sweep of the forest. The waving boughs undulated through an alluring dance that he'd either never noticed before or simply hadn't been paying attention to. Like they were calling him. Beckoning him in....

The door dragged heavy without an engine-assisted pull function. It took a minute of wheezing and straining to get it closed. Sunlight drove a bright chisel through the chink, dust and pollen swirling across the beam.

Kraglin sneezed, but only as an afterthought.

They gathered below the cockpit. That had been transformed into a conservatory, too hot for use at midday. The space beneath it remained temperate, and light filled the excavated ship like rum in a glass. Yondu and Rocket sat together, Groot flopped across Yondu's knee, soothed by his warmth.

Or at least, he was soothed until he saw Kraglin. Then the crying started full-force.

“Dammit,” growled Rocket. “We just got him quiet, an' all.”

Kraglin's usual inclination was to wince and back away, apologizing profusely. Right now though, he wanted to show Rocket what a  _proper_ growl sounded like.

Yondu cut him off before he got the chance.

“Kiddo's just spooked, is all. Weren't Kraggles's fault. Now Krags, c'mere and lemme know what'chu see.”

The scanner hosted four red dots, surrounded by a medley of chittering gold and amber. Kraglin squinted at them, applying potential patterns until he found one that fit. “That's us. Gold's plants, amber animals?”

“Other way around. A lot of bugs round here.” Rocket slapped one in demonstration. “It can be too bright to make out bigger life, unless we cut out all mass-levels under my size, and dim all plant life – present company excluded.”

Groot sniffled, cuddling Yondu's kneecap through the leather.

“Here’s us in the garden,” Rocket continued, scrolling through the reel of footage. Watching the yellow and orange dots scramble over each other was oddly entrancing, like watching a termite nest. “And here's us walkin' to the hut. Notice anything?”

Kraglin shook his head. Everything was as it should be, their signatures steady and unwavering, until - “There!”

Rocket pulled a face. “Huh?”

“There, look! Didn't you see?”

“Uh, buddy. Whole point of this is that there ain't nothing  _to_ see. No monster lurking by the treeline. Nothing but us and lil' mammals” -

“Yer a lil' mammal,” Yondu muttered, and said 'ow' obligingly when Rocket hit him.

\- "Within scannin' range. Means the smell musta blown here on the wind.”

“Oh.” Sheepish, Kraglin sat back, folding his hands onto his lap. Rocket seemed content to leave the conversation there, but Yondu, noting Kraglin's shrivelling demeanor, sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Whaddid ya see.”

“Huh?”

“Ya pointed to somethin'. What was it.”

“Oh just...” Kraglin hiked one shoulder higher than the other, flush ripening. He didn't meet their eyes – two pairs only. Groot hid in the creases where Yondu's pants folded under the knee. “My signature keeps changing color. See?”

He prodded the hologram and twisted, winding the data spool back like thread on a bobbin. It took a minute to pinpoint the screenshot where the red dots of Rocket, Yondu and Groot suddenly harbored a gold speckle in their midst.

Rocket's muzzle twisted when he frowned, wrinkles forming over his snout. It was kinda adorable. It'd be better if Kraglin could stop thinking about what he'd taste like long enough to concentrate.

What was  _with_ him today? Stars, don't let that boar have been rabid.

“That's strange. It ain't s'pposed to do that.”

“Glitch,” Kraglin suggested. “You mighta made a mistake while you was wirin' it up, or -”

“Watch your mouth, skinny! I don't make mistakes.”

“And my ass ain't blue,” Yondu drawled. This time, when Rocket thwacked his thigh, Yondu returned the gesture, flattening the rodent's ears to his head. “Alright. C'mon, if yer convinced there ain't no beastie lurkin' about outside, you and Twig best be off. I ain't playin' host no more.”

Rocket feigned disappointment. “Aw, not gonna invite us for dinner?”

Kraglin, who did occasionally strive to be a decent being – or as decent as a space pirate got – bit back his growl. 

So sue him. He disliked sharing his captain’s affection. Not with anyone other than Quill (and, in a more professional sphere, Tullk and Oblo: two of Yondu's loyallest who'd paid the ultimate price).

However, at the end of the day, he cared about Yondu's happiness more than his own jealousy – even if that jealousy had been overactive for the past couple of days, watching Yondu tote around a baby when he should be lavishing attention on his mate.

The old git deserved friends. Kraglin sucked at making them personally, but he’d ride the bow-wave and accept those drawn to his captain.

Just… not tonight.

He grinned at Rocket, careful not to show too many teeth, and draped himself over Yondu's side.

“Ya sure you wanna stay for dinner, Rat?"He grinned at Rocket, careful not to show too many teeth, and draped himself over Yondu's side. "R _eally_ sure?”

The blood didn’t drain from Rocket's face – or rather, if it did, he was so fluffy no one noticed. He made an expression suited to bad taxidermy and retrieved Groot from where he shivered on Yondu’s lap, cringing every time Kraglin breathed.

“Ugh. Say no more. Me an' the twig'll be on our way. You idjits have fun, use protection."

Yondu snorted. “You kiddin'? Nothin' but bots and this git for decades. He's goin' in bareback.”

Rocket's lips pulled off the gum. “ _Gross._ ”

“Hey, who knows? One day ya might find a lil' lady-rat, an' -”

“You stop that train of thought right there, old man. Don't need you matchmaking with every woodland critter you bring home for the stew pot.”

They bickered away. Kraglin let it fade. He focused on the thrum in his chest, which swelled up like a star approaching supernova.

He didn’t specialize in self-confidence, and Yondu was far from the most loquacious when it came to matters of a mushy nature. He didn’t starve Kraglin of affection – Yondu had other ways of letting him know he cared. He kept his porthole covered so that the  _Warbird's_ interior remained a pollen-free zone, fusty without a through-breeze. He massaged the back of Kraglin's neck when he noticed him holding it awkwardly, crooked from the weight of the prosthetic. He even cooked for him – not that Kraglin had been receptive to it, as of late.

Yondu liked him. More than anyone except Quill, and that was in a whole other sense of the word. It meant the galaxy to hear him very-almost say so.

 _Decades._ Had it really been that long? Yes, Kraglin supposed, as Rocket checked the bioscanner one last time, with a frown at Kraglin's fluttery light. Yes, it had.

They were both getting on, even if Yondu had ten years on him. They'd lived lives to the fullest: fighting the Kree, bickering with rival factions, battling Sakaarans and Nova Corps and Ego; watching the nebula fluctuate through a thousand colors, only half of which were visible to the naked eye; pressing lips to bared teeth as they drifted between solar systems after an engine blow-out, unsure if they'd ever reach civilized space again...

They'd been everywhere, done everything – or at least, seeing as there were infinite possibilities out there, they'd done everything they wanted to. And now they deserved a little peace.

“Catch ya later,” Rocket called, after Yondu and Kraglin heaved open the door. He looked strange, an animal strutting through Yondu's garden on two legs. Groot didn't return Yondu's wave – the one Kraglin pretended not to see, blinking up at the sun instead. It meant he missed the bury of Groot's wet face in Rocket's throat _._ He only caught the tail end of Rocket's reply, as he clambered into his pod and latched their safety harness.

“The hell you talkin' about? Just a fault in the wirin', buddy. Anyway, Blue's got Kraglin. You've seen what that arrow can do, they'll be -”

_Just fine._

The hatch sealed. Compression achieved. Sound sliced off halfway through a word, although Rocket's lower jaw kept wagging, muzzle split to reveal his sharp underteeth. He spared a hand to wave as they took off, and Kraglin did too, sighing when Groot flinched.

“Poor lil' guy,” he said, striving to sound sympathetic rather than victimized. “Wonder whas up with him?”

“Scared of yer ugly face is all.” But as soon as the pod had vanished into the canopy, swooping under and over the crisscrossing boughs, Yondu amended Kraglin's pout. He swivelled him so they faced each other, dragging his mouth into range of his own. “Lucky I don't spook easy.”

Kraglin fell into the kiss. His prosthetic weighed his head to the side, and they clonked noses like they were randy juveniles again, making out in cupboards, M-ship holds, insulation pipes, anywhere with opaque walls and breathable atmosphere, writhing together in the dark crannies of Stakar's flagship.

The pollen distracted Kraglin from his recollections: the promise of warm blue skin, a crack-toothed smile, the giddy excitement as the Admiral’s protege wedged them in a vent duct and wriggled until Kraglin’s mouth was in licking distance of a genital.

His eyes streamed. The sneeze built like a magma core, and he really ought to warn Yondu before-

“Ah- _choo!_ ”

Yondu staggered like he'd been shot. Gunge clung to his twitching forehead. He couldn’t be slimier if he’d fallen face first into a jthuoan worm-nest.

Kraglin gulped his snotty mouthful. He offered a handkerchief – he’d taken to carrying one since his run-in with the sappy branch.

He received a whistle for his trouble. Impotent, of course. It wouldn't have connected even if Yondu's skull housed the prosthetic rather than his own. Kraglin had sneezed directly into Yondu's mouth; the poor guy was blowing bubbles.

Kraglin stuffed the handkerchief up his sleeve, rubbing where the fin welded to the base of his head.

“Uh – sorry. Pick up where we left off?”

Yondu scraped mucus off his cheeks. Snail-trails accentuated his scowl-lines.

“Or,” he gritted, plopping cross-legged on the path that wound between brassicas and root vegetables, “ya could show me that you ain't been skimpin' on arrow-practice.”

Kraglin's apologetic smile inverted. “What?”

“Ya heard me.”

“No chance of me changin' yer mind?”

Yondu's frown twitched, but only once. “Nope.”

And that was that. Kraglin flung himself down, arranging the arrow so he didn't get pronged in the backside.

“What'chu want me to do?” he asked. Then flailed as a pebble nailed him direct between the eyes. “Ow! The hell!”

“Throwin' up yer hands won't help if a blaster bolt’s headed yer way.” Yondu tossed his next stone, plucked from a pile that grew as he weeded. It might've been called 'ornamental' if arranged with any finesse; as it was, irregular pebbles were heaped in a jenga-stack, shale rolling to replace each thrown rock.

The second bounced off Kraglin's shoulder. There'd be a bruise in the morning, and knowing Yondu, he wouldn't even kiss it better.

“C'mon, boy. Think fast. Quit reactin' like a knife man -” This when the next projectile had Kraglin reaching for his leg-sheathe. “Whistle, dammit.”

“I- I don't wanna hurt ya. I ain't too great at controllin' it yet -”

“How else're you meant to practice?” Yondu knelt, juggling his next volley. His grin shone jagged as his ammunition. “Here's yer stakes – you stab me, ain't no nookie gonna happen tonight.”

That was motivation, alright. Kraglin cleared his throat, fiddling with the sheath buckle, gilt clinking against his nails. “An' if I win?”

“I letchu fuck my asshole.”

Without further ado, Kraglin whistled.

They sat like that a while, him and Yondu, until Kraglin cleaved two stones down their core, the arrow point cracking them like flints in a fire. Yondu dived backwards - Kraglin's braking skills needed work. But he laughed as Kraglin whistled the arrow in a wobbly loop-the-loop, guiding it back to the harness.

Kraglin, self-conscious, ran his tongue over his lips. They were dry, chapped from being pursed into the wind. “What?”

“Ya look real constipated when yer concentrating.”

Kraglin snorted, patting the arrow to make sure it was secure. It jiggled its gratitude, although it might’ve been his imagination. “Thanks, boss.”

“Not yer -”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Idjit.” Yondu shuffled over, tugging on Kraglin's arm. He pivoted as Yondu directed him, moving so they sat abreast on the narrow path. They admired the higgledy piggledy rows, the slats in the fence and the forest beyond. “Ravager captains don't apologize for shit.”

“Not even skipping whistling practice?”

Yondu grimaced. “Yeah, issa bit obvious. Ya gotta do better, Krags.”

He said it so simply. Expectation, rather than nagging. As if Yondu believed Kraglin capable of this. As if he truly thought that Kraglin could assume Yondu's place in the galaxy: leading their new horde, protecting Peter, making good with Stakar (as if every time he saw that smarmy git he didn't want to drive a fist up his…)

“Kraglin?”

That fist clenched so tight the tendons stood out like cheese wire. Kraglin forced himself to relax. It was a slow process. It only got slower when Yondu plucked his hand from his lap and transferred it to his own.

If Kraglin let his fist uncurl, Yondu'd have no reason to rub it. Kraglin couldn't have that - and so he let his fingers loosen over a duration of minutes rather than seconds, big blue thumbs sweeping the knobbles of his wrist bones, exhaling long and slow. His eyes drifted half-closed, until the bright daylight dimmed to something more welcoming.

“About yer asshole,” he said. Yondu rearranged.  The tack of his skin on Kraglin's leathers passed a low electrical current between them, zapping under skin.

“What about it?”

“You wanna... now?”

Yondu considered. Rather than pushing Kraglin down in the dust without a care for next season's vegetables, he scooted out of reach and picked up his trowel: left where he'd dropped it after the bilgesnipe got randy and humped a tree upwind.

That was Kraglin's working theory. What else could it have been?

“I don't think ya did well enough for yer reward,” he said, when Kraglin tuned in from his ogle. Yondu wore his pants slung low enough to reveal a cheeky inch on each side. Sunbeams warmed his skin like a tropical ocean, cupping his ass with rich gold hands. “So ya get to wait 'til I'm done with this row. You just sit tight an' look pretty, Kraggles – I'll deal with ya in a minute.”

Oh no he didn't. That was just cruel.

Kraglin rumbled low in his chest, deep as the warbles of an M-ship on lift-off. He stalked forwards, legs carrying him further and faster than logic insisted they ought to – but Kraglin wasn't listening to logic right now.

Yondu bent over his potatoes, sun dappling the perfect, tempting swoop of his back.

Kraglin kissed Yondu's neck. Whispered his sorry there, against the skin. That was their only contact: Kraglin's lips on his mate's pulse, the wrinkle around Yondu's implant brushing the tip of Kraglin's nose.

Yondu grumbled something about randy Xandarian idjits. But he relaxed, jerking his head to one side so the gold loop banged off Kraglin’s teeth. Kraglin took him up on the offer. He slurped the earring in his mouth, hands settling finger by finger on the rolled meat at Yondu's waist.

When Yondu chuckled his belly quivered: a harmony of soft and firm. He let him suck and groan and grind against him while he tended to his garden. He couldn't help cackling at the wettest smacks, as Kraglin let his teeth glide over the tender lobe and thought about how easy it would be to bite.

“You tryin' out for a porno or what, Kraggles?”

No. This was for Yondu. This was all for Yondu.

Curled over his partner like a snake, Kraglin probed the divot where ring pierced the skin, tasting the sour amalgamation of metal and body lint. He fluttered his tongue, mimicking what he'd do to Yondu's clit if he had thick blue thighs rubbing on his beard instead of a bristly cheek.

Those same thighs squirmed together, capturing Kraglin's hand when it cupped Yondu's prick. “Don'tchu wanna go in the ‘Bird-”

“Why? Ain't no one here but us.” Spoken slow, barely audible above the growl. Judging by the press of an ass against the tent in Kraglin's shredded jumpsuit, Yondu liked it.

The jumpsuit fell in a bramble patch – so Kraglin claimed. Whether or not Yondu believed him, a quick inspection had proven Kraglin uninjured, the scratch on his arm vanished without a trace. Now, when Kraglin popped the clasp on Yondu's belt, tugging his threadbare workpants until they stuck, his captain rubbed his bare behind on Kraglin's fly like he could undo the zipper with friction.

No. Not his captain, not anymore – as much as Kraglin wanted him to be.

 

Kraglin's prosthetic bonked Yondu's nape. Yondu's implant made his skull misshapen and craggy, and when Kraglin scraped it he felt the sting of a spark. Yondu didn't have nerves in the implant itself, but the skin around it had always been deliciously sensitive. He hissed, pushing onto his hands and knees to escape the grind of yaka on yaka – and Kraglin plastered himself over him in a blanket of dark blue fur and claws and...

That wasn't right. Fuck, he needed sleep.

Kraglin blinked until the shapes solidified. Hands. Familiar hands - his own. Heat throbbed beneath the tiredness, and while his mind demanded he pass out under blankets, the churn in his groin wouldn’t let him rest.

Strange. He wasn't usually the forceful one. Yondu took charge, barking orders, riding Kraglin into the captain's chair until there were bruises on both their behinds. But Yondu had relinquished his captaincy. And right now, gluttony twisted through Kraglin like an intravenous huffer-shot, whispering dark things, enticing him to bite, to pin, to fuck...

“Krags,” Yondu said.

Warning. Dangerous. He might not have his arrow, but he'd drilled obedience into his mate.

Kraglin froze, teeth oddly tender. He spat out his mouthful of neck.

“S'rry sir,” he muttered. “M'half asleep.”

“Huh.” Yondu settled more stably on all fours, making sure he hadn't squashed any shoots. Then, regally, he rubbed his ass against Kraglin.

 

His leathers pinched tight all of a sudden, too hot. A second skin that needed to be shed. Kraglin fumbled his zipper, yanking it to his waist. The rasp drowned out the rustle of the undergrowth.

He was panting, he realized belatedly. His cardio might not be exemplary, but nevertheless, this was a bit much. They'd only just begun. His leather didn’t itch but his  _skin itself;_  he wanted to slough off great sheets under his nails.

A three-quarter zip striped Kraglin's torso towards his left hipbone. When unpeeled, it dangled around his chest and gut, the former of which was scrawny as ever while the latter became more pronounced as the years wore on. His body hair gleamed darker than usual, pitch-colored, curling around his nipples and down to his naval and lower, to where Kraglin unzipped the last inch and pried grotty underwear away from his dick.

“Someone's horny,” Yondu said, laugh in his voice. Muscles contracted around Kraglin's cock base. It bounced as he eased Yondu's pants south, clumping blue thighs together.

And hey. Yondu offered his ass, right?

Kraglin swiped his thumb along the seam, watching the tremor. Anticipation kept Yondu tense until the moment Kraglin pulled his cheeks apart and rested his plumped, dripping cockhead against -

“Uh. Krags? You gonna – I dunno. Lube?”

In the back of his head, Kraglin frowned at himself in a very stern fashion. He’d skipped important steps, he knew. But at the same time, he  _wanted_ , and more than that he  _needed_ , and his hips bucked on instinct alone.

His dick slid along Yondu's crack. Going so long without seeing one another made for steamy reunions, but while Yondu was very far from virgin-tight, the breaks between their sexcapades gave him enough respite to pucker up again. If Kraglin wanted to batter in dry, it would take effort. He'd have to pin Yondu on his flowerbed, hold his asscheeks open, position himself over him and fuck down like a jackhammer, opening him with force, and...

...And why the hell was he picturing that?

Kraglin pushed his cock over Yondu's ass again, bumping him forwards so his nails chewed the dirt. No penetration, no squeeze. Just a rough skid, slickened by what leaked from Yondu's slit. He longed to worm his dick into that, feel it pulse in his pussy. But the pants lashed Yondu's legs together, a chastity belt of crackly old leather.

The slide of dick on skin maddened him. It wasn't a physical pain, even if it translated that way in Kraglin's mind. It was a craving. A desperate longing; a need. Sparking tracts slammed open in Kraglin's brain, new pathways along which signals could flit.

It was all he wanted, to sink inside his mate. To thrust and to bite and to  _breed_.

Rocked over his potato flowers, Yondu exhaled in a noisy gust. “You forgotten the basics or what, boy? I can talk ya through it, or we can keep goin' until I jog yer memory...”

He forced his legs a fraction wider, zipper straining. The extra give was welcome. Kraglin plowed forwards, cockhead tapping the moist furrow of his cunt.

“S-sir,” he moaned.

“Yondu,” came the correction. Kraglin didn't have the presence of mind to fret over it. Not when a warm body twisted under him, a sopping little cunt bared to the plunge of his fingers, his tongue, his dick...

He couldn't cram that inside, not at this angle. It still smelt  _wrong_ somehow, but dammit, this was Kraglin's cap'n and he loved him more than he loved the open stars. If the odd spot of thrush didn’t faze Yondu, Kraglin wouldn't let it bother him either.

“Please,” he said, lost beneath the snarl. “Please.”

He held Yondu's buttocks at their widest, stretching the pliant pinch of his hole. The star flexed beautifully, rim a shiny navy. But it would take time to prepare that Kraglin didn't have, and he wanted inside Yondu  _now_...

Only one thing for it. Fumbling beneath them, whining whenever he grazed his dick, Kraglin grabbed a handful of leather and  _ripped_.

“Huh,” said Yondu, as air slapped his thighs.

Then again - “Huh?” - when he found his pussy full of cock. Kraglin gripped the back of his implant, forcing him face down in the dirt. “Mind my fuckin' – c-cabbages – fuck, Kraglin -”

Yondu dripped, slick mingling with Kraglin's precum. There was a helluva lot of that. The sheer quantity would’ve been unnerving, if Kraglin was in the mindset to appreciate it. Right now all he only knew  _warmth_ and  _wet_ and  _soft_ , and the patch of friction that made them both shudder when Kraglin ground against it. 

It was good. It was so very, very good. But it wasn't enough. Kraglin needed... He needed...

He didn't know what he needed. But while he jolted forwards into Yondu and wrenched back again, snapping fast as a humping dog, it didn't ease the pang in his hindbrain.

The smell. Too tart, too sharp and sour and infertile...

Kraglin frowned. Glanced down – and then again; double-take. For a moment he swore that the cock pulling on Yondu’s cunt was blue.

Not the same blue. Inkier. Blacker. The blue he saw in his nightmares.

He was awake now though. His dick flushed pink as ever, unadorned and simple.

Yondu'd sighed first time he drew it out. Kraglin remembered babbling  _I know issa standard model, sir, but wait until ya see what I can do with it_ ; then the pair of them fumbling, both trying a tad too hard to impress.

Kraglin appreciated this with hindsight. At the time, he swore he was the only one whose experience got sucked out the airlock the moment his teeth clonked on Yondu’s, a spitty chime of enamel and gold. He recalled the awkward silence after they both came earlier than intended. How Yondu broke it with a half-coughed snigger, and Kraglin gratefully copied him.

This time however, Kraglin came with a howl.

It was every bit of ridiculous as it sounded. Yondu laughed too hard to follow him, innards squeezing with each chuckle. The note wavered, cresting high above Kraglin's usual register as his vision wobbled red. He mapped heat-spirals, following the pump of blood through Yondu’s veins. He kept ramming until the inwards cram of his limp cock risked spraining the poor thing.

Kraglin collapsed, flopping loose. Exhaustion extinguished the afterglow. He landed on Yondu, who maintained his four-legged stance with a good-natured  _oof_.

“Y'alright back there?”

Kraglin nodded. He swallowed, parched and prickly – any moisture in his body had long since evaporated. The sweat circles under his pits could drown small mammals.

“Did ya,” he asked, groping under Yondu, finding the stretch of his pant legs. He walked up until he found a dripping slit and above it, the answer to his question. “Uh. Sorry.”

Yondu pressed into the loose cup of his hand. He didn't say shit – no orders for Kraglin to make it up to him, no reassurances that he didn't mind. Just expectation and lust. When Kraglin squeezed, breath left him in a harsh pant. His head dangled as he shunted back and forth, an even fuck into Kraglin's fist.

 

Yondu sported a decent party-piece. Like his own, it didn't have much going for it in the way of funky features – but Kraglin sat on it on the regular, back in the days when Yondu worried that going more than a month without topping eroded his masculinity. 

The weight of that shaft, the throb of Yondu's pulse against his palm... Kraglin licked his lips, tucking his chin over Yondu's shoulder. That flexed, keeping him balanced as Yondu drove his pelvis hard against the circle of Kraglin's index and thumb.

“Thassit,” he mumbled at the twitch. That, plus the quiet groan, was all the warning he got before his hand flooded. Yondu ground to a gasping, squelching halt. Kraglin let him revel in it, dotting tender kisses around Yondu's ear.

“Thanks, sir,” he said, and he meant it.

Yondu purred, back vibrating against Kraglin’s chest. His limp prick slid from his hand. Kraglin spread his fingers, letting seed drip between. As Kraglin treated Yondu to a final nuzzle before backing off, letting him right his wobbly balance, a primal burst of satisfaction pulsed through him, electric in its intensity, at the sight of Yondu's dripping, tender-gaping slit.

But he wanted to know. Had it settled? Was this complete; had they seen this through…?

Before he could duck and inhale, Yondu slumped onto his side, saving his cabbages from a crushing at the last minute. He sacrificed a potato stalk in their stead, but that wasn’t such a great loss. As his legs fell closed, the strange urge dwindled, leaving Kraglin snorting air and wondering what the hell set him off.

Yondu meanwhile, scratched his crotch with a satisfied grumble.

“Stream,” was all he said, before arranging his shredded pants and leading the way.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments and kudos are lovely! Thank you to everyone who leaves them x**


	5. Just Moving Slow

Fireflies strung through the air like beads on a gymnast's ribbon, flitting gently widdershins. The skeeters skittered against the porthole, illuminated by the warm glow of the fire.

Sleep should come quickly, but it didn't. This was in part down to Yondu. Once he’d finished his garden to his satisfaction, or at the very least decided that the burnished amber firelight didn't provide enough illumination for him to reliably target weeds, he clambered into the nest besides Kraglin, snuggling against him so Kraglin's senses were overwhelmed with _captain_.

But it was mostly thanks to Kraglin's dick.

Kraglin wriggled from one bony hip to the other. He lay on his front, as resting on his back threatened to erect a tent, and if he chose his favored side, he'd be stabbing Yondu in the backside. His cock jammed against his thigh, battened by his bodyweight.

Yondu had twigged his predicament some time ago, around when Kraglin started rocking against the pelts. He'd made a snappy comment about Kraglin being a spry young thing, up for two rounds in a day – channelling sarcasm to hide that he was impressed, and possibly (not that Kraglin would say so) jealous.

After ordering him not to jizz on his blankets, he proclaimed that he was going to sleep, and no, Kraglin was not allowed to molest him, because he was tired and old and if he didn't rest after gardening he'd be seized up come morning like arthritic joints before a solar storm.

Kraglin hadn't done much in the way of manual labor, but he was still mighty whacked. However, while his brain craved the comforts of the mattress, his balls had other ends in mind.

Especially after Yondu pressed his body along Kraglin's exposed side. He was an oxymoron of hard and soft, limbs like putty from the earlier fuck. His slowing breath stunk, rank and warm. The smell of their dinner made Kraglin faintly bilious (he'd eaten the first fish with gusto when Yondu flipped it off the fire raw, but the second, more charred, clogged in his throat and refused to be swallowed, resulting in a lot of coughing, hacking, and a messily executed Heimlich).

Despite the nausea, his prick was adamant. It wanted attention, and now.

Kraglin couldn’t slake it on the hides. They were too hairy; the friction unbearable as his cock pronged the piled mats again and again.

“Can't I just rub on ya?” he tried. “Won't put it in. Jus' gonna rub raw on these bedclothes, y’know?”

Yondu groaned. It was a long spiel of click-ridden nonsense. But while it involved vague references to 'you got hands, don'tcha' and 'fuckin' insatiable, knew I shouldna traded up for the younger model', it finished with a 'yeah, whatever; jus' don't wake me up'.

Good enough.

Permission granted, Kraglin was endearingly eager – or at least, he hoped it was endearing. He hitched his hips against Yondu's buttocks, mind providing a filthy reel of visuals drawn partly from imagination and mostly from experience. He gripped both beefy cheeks to squeeze them around his shaft, creating a tunnel of rasping skin -

Yondu grunted, foot thwacking Kraglin's shin. “Did I say ya could manhandle me?”

“Did ya say I couldn't?” But he let him go, as commanded. After half a minute of clumsy thrusting resulted in Kraglin repeatedly banging Yondu's tailbone, Yondu lurched briefly upright, felt about behind him until he located an arm, and collapsed back on his pillow, wrapping it over in a knobbly seatbelt.

“There,” he muttered, eyes still shut. Then promptly fell still again, slackening as he chased sleep.

Kraglin cleared his throat.

“Ya sure ya can't grind back a lil',” he started, then paused to stifle his yawn in Yondu's neck.

His teeth dug in. Kraglin's teeth weren't especially sharp, although the bottom set sported chips from the occasional punch. Like any other self-respecting Ravager, he'd ripped out his fair share of throats, but he tended to rely on knives for that purpose. His jaws couldn’t puncture flesh - not without effort.

Until now.

Yondu's crotchety reply faltered.

“Ow, fuck! Krags -”

As any man would in his position – throat introduced without warning to teeth – he yanked away.

Kraglin snarled.

Blood filled his mouth. Copper ambrosia, rich and succulent, thick-scented as wine. He smelled it as much as he tasted it, a blur of sensory feedback that swirled around his brain like a hit of Huffer smoke.

Good. So good.

The heat in his cock drizzled back into his belly. Lust waned as hunger grew, and between one heartbeat and the next, his vision flared red. Heat blossomed across Yondu's limbs. His adrenaline spiked and he scrabbled at the covers in a burst of pain-fuelled strength as jaws locked on either side of his spine.

“Kraglin? Fuck – Kraglin?”

He knew that name. But the body beneath him was small and firm and blue, and it wriggled most enticingly for escape.

He growled, snorting hot breath over the blue one's nape. The other blue one, he should say; the hands that wrestled his prey flat on the pelts were dark as midnight and thick with hair...

“Kraglin – Kraglin! What the hell -”

Kraglin snarled again. Of course, Xandarian jaws weren't made to chomp through vertebrae. But in that moment, Kraglin knew – simply _knew_ , without needing to stroke the bulge of the muscle under his chin or the new elongation in his mandible bone – that he could snap Yondu's neck with a bite.

…The hell?

Kraglin's blue irises simmered to the surface. He spat out his mouthful. Skin broke in a pulpy mess. Blood stained Kraglin's canines, drooling down his chin.

“Fuck,” he said.

Yondu had frozen at the growl. He took the chance to scamper forwards. And, when Kraglin let him, he kicked him in the balls and fled to the hut's far side, hand clapped over his leaking neck.

“Fuck! What the fuck, Kraglin?”

Kraglin curled foetal style around his crotch, copper tingling on his tastebuds. He wished he had an answer.

 

* * *

 

 

Yondu was pissed. That was understandable.

Kraglin arranged for a rare off-week, away from the hustle and bustle of Ravager life. After scooting their young ward off-planet, he attempted to tear Yondu's throat open and stick his dick in him. Not necessarily in that order.

But Yondu being pissed usually meant that Kraglin spent considerable time at arrowpoint. Now however, the arrow tucked through Kraglin's belt.

It refused to respond to Yondu's whistling. He tried a gliss, rising in pitch and volume and frustration, and glared pure venom at Kraglin when he mentioned which of them insisted the yaka link be broken in the first place. Therefore, Yondu had no choice but to turn to alternative means of punishment.

Kraglin disliked it _intensely._

“Yondu,” he said, because calling him 'cap'n' would only prolong his torture. He plonked a fresh bowl of water besides him, collected from the brook, and a fish, which he'd spent the last hour chasing with clumsy whistles. Of course, had Yondu kept the prosthetic, he'd have speared it in one. Kraglin did his best with minimal tutelage. At the very least, he hoped his soaked jumpsuit proved the efforts to which he was willing to go to make amends. “M'sorry.”

Yondu surveyed the flopping, gasping thing dispassionately. Then snorted, and turned away.

This gave Kraglin prime view of the poultice he'd mashed over his wound. He didn’t recognize any of the leaves, and his hayfever returned with the rise of the sun. It didn't strike as vehemently as the day before, but more pressing issues concerned Kraglin than the idiosyncrasies of his immune system.

The only words Yondu had spoken to him, as he stomped from bush to bush, were: 'This one's to prevent rabies'.

Unfortunately, staring at the wound reminded Kraglin not only of his guilt, but also of how good Yondu tasted. He licked his lips, just in case he'd missed any. Then realized what he was doing, and clamped his tongue tip between his incisors, worrying until the only blood he tasted was his own.

 

“Here,” he said, unhooking the arrow and hunkering by Yondu's side. He caught his wrist when he made to shuffle off, playing another round of the cat and mouse game that had been tormenting Kraglin all morning.

Yondu yanked free. Or at least, he should've done, because if there was one unequivocal fact in this galaxy, it was that _Yondu was stronger than his first mate._ Could haul him up against walls and everything.

And sure, they'd worked out their preferences pretty quick – if you discounted that first year of hubris-fueled 'I only top' sex on Yondu's part. But hey, Kraglin couldn't deny that every now and then it was fun to have your partner loop arms under your ass and hoist you skywards, back braced on your cabin door, so he could suck your cock and make you clonk your head off the ceiling when you came.

But regardless of that pleasant digression, the fact remained that Kraglin's fingers locked on Yondu's wrist. He forced them apart, letting Yondu wrench away.

“You on steroids or some shit?” his ex-captain hissed. He didn't back away from Kraglin – of course not; Yondu had balls as big as body was blue. (Not... literally. Kraglin would know.) But he got in his face and _postured,_ pouring every inch into his sneer that five-point-eight feet could provide.

 

Kraglin waited for his natural tendency for grovelling to manifest. And waited, and waited. It stayed absent. In fact, a significant portion of his brain insisted that he shouldn't let this little blue creature threaten him.

Kraglin raised the arrow, face grim. And brought it down – on the fish.

Yondu's eyes popped to cherry-pink circles. They were as betrayed as when Kraglin spoke up on Berhert, and knocked over the first skittle in fate's Rube Goldberg machine.

“The _hell,_ Kraggles!”

Seemed he couldn't do anything right today. Kraglin plucked out the arrowhead, which had skewered the poor thing before it could flap itself to suffocation. “ _What!”_

“Ya don't just – look, thas how ya get rust! Tell me you ain't been usin' my arrow like one of yer damn knives!”

“ _Your_ arrow?”

Yondu shoved him. Not hard – he didn't need to. A fresh breeze was enough to set Kraglin off balance. The prosthetic might as well be a sail; it made him about as susceptible to strong gusts.

Today, however, Kraglin didn't budge. Not as Yondu shook out his stiff wrist, the imprints of Kraglin's fingers visible on the blue, and rested a curled fist over the heart of his chosen successor.

“Y'know what I mean.”

Did he? Kraglin never purported to be a mind reader.

“You want it?” he spat, smacking the arrow off Yondu's knuckles. “You _take it,_ sir.”

Yondu backed off. "No,” he said.

Kraglin advanced. Left on the wooden cookery board by the fire, fish blood gathered in an oily puddle, flies crawling over lidless eyes.

“No? Whas wrong? Ya don't want it?”

“No, I _don't_ fuckin' want it! The hell's gotten into ya today?” Yondu refused to retreat any further, but Kraglin saw the effort it cost him. Smelt it on the air, like he smelled blood infusing the herbal paste. Like he smelled...

“Fear? The hell've ya got to be afraid of, boss? Yer Yondu Udonta. Y’know, biggest, scariest motherfucker in the galaxy, an’ all.”

Yondu wore his crossed arms like body armor. “No. _Was._ Ain't no more, Kraglin, and thas the way it's stayin' -”

“But _why?_ ”

Kraglin thought back to when Yondu first clung to him, fresh from the decompression chamber with Stakar’s ships closing in, croaking _stop, stop, make it stop,_ until Kraglin pressed their foreheads together and swore so. After six months and ten visits, spaced further apart as Yondu convinced Kraglin he needed to spend less time doting on him and more with his newly-fledged crew, that was the one thing Kraglin never understood.

He'd _been there._ He'd _stayed by his side._ He'd _listened –_ but cap’n being cap’n had never shared his reasoning.

Why would Yondu, self-professed lover of all things illegal, leave all that behind him?

“You could come back,” he insisted. “Run with Stakar's gang again. Work jobs with Peter and his buds. Just like ya always wanted.”

Yondu shook his head. “Can’t do that, Krags. Not anymore.”

“And ya think I can? Yondu – look, boss. _Captain._ Ya can't expect me to keep this up.”

“The hell?”

“This was s'pposed to be temporary, stars dammit!” Sentiment choked him surer than pollen-steeped phlegm. He struggled to force his words around it: “Ya were supposed to stay here until ya... until ya got better, sir! And then ya were s'pposed to come back again! To the Ravagers, to – to me! This place, this asteroid, yer – yer fuckin' stupid garden... It ain't forever!”

But he'd been here long enough, and seen enough now, to know that for Yondu, it just might be. 

Kraglin repeated the last phrase without any hope, arms flopping limp to his sides.

“It ain't forever. Right?”

Yondu took Kraglin's drooping as his cue to inflate. Dirt crunched under bare toes. He buried fists in Kraglin's collar and yanked him so they stood nose-to-nose.

“Jackass,” Yondu hissed. This close, Kraglin could count the folds around his eyes. “Ya want me to apologize for not being strong enough? For not bein' the man ya want me to be?"

He smacked his chest, a parody of a Ravager salute, before using the hand twisted in Kraglin's collar to shake him.

“I just – I wanna be me! I wanna be me, I wanna see you an' Peter, an' I want the Rat and the Twig to visit, an’ I don't wanna deal with Stakar because he's a _huge fuckin' reminder_ of how I weren't nothin' before I met him and nothin' for a long time after-”

Not a word made sense to Kraglin, other than the subtext. Yondu intended to stay. When he shook his head, the prosthetic shook with him.

“You can't run away! That ain't you, boss! You ain't no coward!”

“Maybe,” Yondu growled, sneer peeling off his dull gold teeth, “I ain't the man y'all seem so darn sure I am.”

Kraglin couldn't think about that. Maybe he was the cowardly one – even though the fin sat on his head, and Yondu was defenceless. So _very_ defenceless, for all his raging. Why, Kraglin could whistle him through and drag his body out to the nearest ravine for the forest creatures to find. Everyone would assume he lost his footing. It would be so, _so_ very easy…

Or better yet: he could rip him open personally. Glut himself on blue meat.

Yondu's shoulders were hard from a lifetime of heavy work, but his meat turned tender around the belly and thighs. Kraglin could strip dripping chunks of it, drink the gushing lifeblood, suckle on Yondu’s heart as it slowed to a thud, a plod, a halt…

Yondu blanched. “Kraglin,” he said.

Kraglin watched him swallow. The bob of the bulge in his throat, the heave of his chest, the palpitation under his pierced ear, so hot and wet and _thudding_ that Kraglin could practically _taste_ it...

“Kraglin, you ain't lookin' so... Yer eyes...”

Not one Yondu. One _hundred_. The tiny images sat side by side, arranged around a honeycomb as if Kraglin peered through a bug-eye lens. And they all reached hesitantly towards him, concern twisting their multitudinous faces.

Kraglin's fin ached: a chisel driven into the top of his head. He felt...

_Hungry._

“Get away from me,” he tried to say. His vocal cords grated, lengthening the words into a snarl. Behind them, Yondu's fire blazed brighter than the dancing glow-bugs. But it wasn't the light that overwhelmed Kraglin's senses – it was the heat. So much of it, roaring and confusing, muddling the swamp of senses that filtered through his brain.

Enough heat that if he stared solely at it, and not at Yondu – certainly not at Yondu's throat, or his groin or his chest or any of the other points were arteries clustered close to the surface, blood within fang-scraping range – he could concentrate.

The pain in his prosthetic intensified. It clawed like something on the inside of his skull was scratching to get out.

“Yondu. Yondu, you need to run.”

Yondu, contrary as ever, took a step closer.

No. No, this was bad. Kraglin couldn't hold it off. He could _smell him;_ it was all too much...

“Go,” he snarled. He didn't have much of a chin, but it weighed heavier than usual as his jawbone underwent a long-overdue growth spurt. On his crown, the join to the prosthetic glimmered, a whole inch taller than it should be. “Get outta here.”

Yondu took another pace towards him, outstretched hand stinking of prey. Kraglin did the only thing left to him. He _roared._

“ _Run,_ Yondu!”

The sound burst out, too big for his lungs. It resounded around the garden, scattering birds and lemurs into the canopy.

Yondu hesitated – until Kraglin dug his claws into his leg to stop himself pouncing.

Blood slithered out. Not the runny Xandarian blood he was used to – oh no. This was viscous, tar-like. Bright purple, the color of Groot's favorite candy.

The fin lurched another inch from the crisp shaved lines of Kraglin's skull. Those were neither so crisp nor so shaved anymore. Hair thrust from every follicle, thickening and darkening, bristling like a bilgesnipe’s mane. The prosthetic worked free, a sick grate over Kraglin's greymatter.

Yondu froze when red eyes snapped to his. Lips twisted around a saliva-flecked snarl: dripping canines, liquorice gums. Blue fur swarmed towards Kraglin’s nose, leaving a circle of skin as if Kraglin was trapped mid-transformation, a quasimodo-hybrid of Xandarian and...

In that moment, when he whistled and felt nothing, Yondu saw death.

Kraglin – the creature that had been Kraglin – wrenched the implant from its skull. The raw slice smoothed as soon as it was bared, overflowing with thick navy fur. It readied itself to lunge, muscle contracting along bandy blue legs. But, at the last possible second, its growl wavered.

The prosthetic clattered to rest by the monster's feet. One of its eyes twitched, feral red flashing blue.

“Run,” Kraglin whispered.

With a particularly vehement flurry of curses, Yondu did.

 

* * *

 

 

(By AlexanderBadass!)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **There we go! I hope you enjoyed this, the first instalment in the 'Buglin' series (I'm. Working on a title. Hehe.) As mentioned in the intro, the sequel will start posting in the New Year, one chapter a week. There is a sequel to the sequel too, which I'm currently writing, because this concept ran away with me. Which totally surprised me because that never happens. Ever. :looks into camera like I'm on The Office:**
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> ****


	6. I Feel No Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **PART II: BORN AND RAISED IN THE BOONDOCKS**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **At long last! Here it is - the sequel fic to my Buglin epic! Enjoy. There's a third part as well featuring the Grandmaster and Loki on Sakaar, but we'll get to that in good time. For now, sit back and enjoy the ride!**

He crashed through the garden, trampling turnips and tender young cabbage hearts. The long slogs outdoors did him good; he vaulted the fence without pausing, wincing at the snap of his prized runner beans.

How much time? How long before Kraglin lost control?

The undergrowth grew thick. If he clomped on through, the trail would be obvious, even to an inexperienced hunter. But wriggling into the vines would take precious minutes, minutes he might not have...

_Think, dammit. What can you do that Kraglin can't?_

Whistle? Not anymore.

The grip on Yondu's intestines wrung tighter. The monster had burst from Kraglin's skin like one of them parasites old spacers swapped tales of over tankards of moonshine: clawing out from inside him, mutating his flesh. Those claws, those _teeth…_

Yondu didn't have a chance in hell.

But waiting for defeat ensured it. Yondu battled into the bracken, shoulders first.

Climb? Kraglin had about as much grace as a mud-carp when it came to swarming trees. But Yondu didn't know the limitations of his new form. It wasn't a bet he was willing to stake his life on.

Fight bare-knuckle? No. Kraglin might be skinny, but he'd grown another foot, and now he had _claws,_ sharp as the scythes Quill and Yondu used to mow down the shrubbery six Lunars back, laughing and sweating side by side for the first time in years.

Wait.

Quill.

That was it – Yondu had _Quill_.

First task: lure Not-Kraglin away from the _Warbird_. Then he snuck in, retrieved the comm, ordered Quill to get his ass here pronto, and told him to bring all known specs on record for his monstrous mate.

Simple. All he had to do was make it out of the clearing alive.

A howl lurched for the stars. Eerie-high. Haunting _._ A banshee-wail that foretold death.

Other than that? Silence.

So many incidental rustles blurred together to form the forest soundscape – the pad of little paws, the fluff of feathers, the buzz and skitter of insect wings. They were as familiar and constant as elevator music. Like spaceship thrusters, white noise.

When that constant hum vanished, you knew shit was fucked.

Yondu froze.

His heart thundered. Fear crushed him, chilled him, kept him petrified. He might as well have been meat already, swaying upside down in an industrial freezer, a hook through each ankle joint and a bowl under his head to collect the dripping.

How long the howl lasted, Yondu couldn't say. Time warped when you were about to die. Each blink lasted for a nightmare, body too sluggish to keep pace with his racing mind.

_Freezin' up ain't gonna do ya no good for camoflage, idjit. Yer blue._

The howl tapered. The mournful key dropped towards Kraglin's usual octave. It kept going as Yondu dived forwards, clawing at the thicket in a frenzy, thorns tearing the flesh from his arms.

Lowering. Roughening. Becoming a snarl: deep-throated and rumbling like an oncoming earthquake.

Yondu did the one thing he always warned Peter not to.

He panicked.

“Shit! Fuckin' – shit-fuck-damn, I don't fuckin' believe this!”

All that flailing, and he barely progressed ten meters. He needed a kukri to cleave the creepers. Branches dragged across his face and shoulders; ferns netted his shins.

His bare feet bled. _Fuck._ Kraglin would smell that, like Kraglin would smell the fear in the sweat circles under his arms.

Those stuck together, slippery biceps tacking to his chest as he squeezed himself into a streamlined shape. He wriggled forwards rather than trying to barge the jungle out of his way. That worked better; he gained another foot, then two, then more. A boar track wound ahead, weaving through dense vegetation. It was small by the standards of those creatures, not tall enough to strut along upright. But if Yondu crawled, there was a chance...

_Screeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeech._

An ear-splitting shriek. Buckling hull plates, decompression, death.

Yondu’s mind blared _breach_ in place of warning sirens. But there was no explosive suck of air, no burst of blood from his lungs. They were on an asteroid, in atmosphere.

Those were _claws._

Sharp claws, wicked claws, mangling slices into the _Warbird's_ door. Kraglin clung to the ship. He gouged his nails into the metal until they bled, anything to keep himself from...

Fear drained. Stray trembles skittered up and down his spine, but Yondu's mind shone clear as the stream tinkling cross-ways over the boar track.

He had to survive. It was that simple.

Kraglin was still in there, somewhere. He had to be, otherwise teeth would've fastened on Yondu’s neck five minutes ago. And the only thing worse than outliving someone you loved was being the one to put them in the ground.

Yondu refused to let that happen. Kraglin wouldn't watch him die, and he sure as heck wouldn't kill him.

Into the forest, double back to the hut. Then Yondu could call Quill, and threaten the boy’s jolly gang of Guardians into finding a cure before Kraglin stalked into the jungle and was lost forever.

But before that, he needed a decoy.

 

* * *

 

 

The snares lay in concentric ovals around Yondu's hut. They reminded him of the solar orbit holo-models he used to teach Quill about gravity.

He blessed every deity he could think of, from the Kymellian nature-mother to the Kree Wargods invoked before sacrifice, when he heard a bleat from the nearest. He even threw in Ego's name, although it left a bad taste in his mouth. Beggars couldn't afford to be choosy.

“Here,” he murmured, hunkering down besides the creature. She was a gazelle-like thing, all wet eyes and spindly legs.

He stroked her heaving flank, fingers splayed in five firm points of contact, and held her there until she stopped flinching. The snare was easy enough to rig, and could be untied by anyone with opposable thumbs. Better than a bilgesnipe-trap. Meant that if you fell afoul of it while blundering about after dark, drunk on fermented berries, you didn't have to pry metal barbs out of your leg.

“Hiya, sweetheart. Ain't often I say this, not even to pretty lasses like yerself – but girl, I am real darn sorry.”

He wiped his hand on her side. The bloody stripe stood out against the down.

He'd scrubbed away the worst of the mess when he waded upstream, and crushed enough leaves to smother the fresh wounds. It was a stopgap measure – everything stung, and he tempted a whole slew of new and exciting infections. But at the very least, the sappy stench should overpower the warm reek of meat.

He sponged his hand off with another leafy wodge, just to be safe. Finally, once sure that every splash of blood had been erased, Yondu unwrapped the rope from the doe's delicate legs.

Skinny little thing. He grimaced. Kraglin would use her as a toothpick.

He moved slow, doing his best not to spook her. She still bolted the moment he released her, wide-set eyes twitching and delicate rib cage aflutter. Thankfully, she darted in the right direction – deeper into the jungle, away from Yondu's camp.

Yondu sighed at the green gunk between his fingers. Best to branch out and head back by a different route. His paddling session wouldn't have thrown Kraglin off for long.

Far on the path behind him, a dry twig snapped.

The silence spread faster than wildfire – although Yondu's heart pounded so loud he couldn't tell. He had to force himself to move, wriggling his toes first, then squeezing his fists – as if they'd be any defence against what hunted him.

He scolded himself for even _thinking_ about whistling. The arrow rested where it dropped, after Kraglin's fish-stabbing game. Yondu kicked himself for ever giving it up. Just like he kicked himself for _enjoying_ how Kraglin growled and fucked him hard as a beast in rut, and for ignoring Groot when the kid projected the picture of a demon: thick blue fur, filed fangs, compound eyes bright as the red giants that swallowed planets whole...

The truth had been there all along. He'd just been too fucking _dumb_ to see it.

Good old Kraglin, right? Dependable, competent, loyal to a fault. Yondu's closest compatriot, the man who bore his crest and his flame.

He was always there. Even when he faltered – questioning orders, instigating mutinies – he still found his footing. Yondu never thought him capable of hurting him.

Until now.

Like hell would Yondu let the poor guy stay like this. Like hell would he fail him again.

Yondu stole forwards. Fronds surrounded the boar tunnel, wafting in the breeze. He scanned the ground ahead, refusing to check over his shoulder.

Looking back wouldn't help anyways. If Kraglin lunged at him from behind, Yondu didn't want the memory of his dying face stamped on the idiot's eyeballs. Better he go without seeing the monster his mate had become.

The _how_ and _why_ of the transformation remained a mystery. Yondu couldn't focus on that.

 _Get to the ship,_ he reminded himself, slapping his mental processes back on track. _Barricade door. Call Quill._

He held a palmful of ground leaves, sticky and chewed to a pulp. He smeared the squelching unguent into the cuts on his arms and the toothmarks on his neck. Then, moving on shaky limbs, he squirmed forwards, into the ferns.

They closed after him, tasselled green drapes. Not a moment too soon. The snuffling breath and the steady crunch of footsteps grew.

Four of them. Kraglin prowled like an animal. Evenly, that was; not the encumbered scuttle of a man on all fours.

Yondu pictured bent hind legs, stretched front ones. A gaunt creature, corded with muscle, double-teeth in rows like a mouthful of crushed rock chips, his eyes lidless as a bug's. 

_Monster._

It snorted around the snare, gulping down mouthfuls of air, rolling them over its tongue to taste the bloody taint. Yondu held his breath. Crouching silent as possible, knees slipping and sliding in the mulch, he peeped through the trellis of delicate stalks.

Hair. _Blue_ hair. It drifted like the tendrils on the spores, which floated down from the canopy, the only movement besides the flex of Kraglin’s nostrils and the flutter of light through the leaves.

Yondu thanked everything that he hadn't reset the trap. Last thing he wanted was to piss the monster off.

Kraglin stalked closer. He paused outside the bower.

Shit.

Yondu squelched low. He burrowed into the mushrooms and molds that blanketed this burrow in chunky fungal-foam, fist pressed tight to his mouth. Breath raked his knuckles, a degree cooler than the muggy air. He managed to resist chomping down. Right now, drawing blood meant a death sentence.

Kraglin snuffled forwards. His muzzle parted the ferns. Yondu stared at it: the sprouting whiskers, the overflowing canines, the shiny black nose at the end of the snout.

His heart drummed loud enough to deafen. He quivered back onto his mushroom bed. Another puff of spores billowed around him; another sultry belch of methane from the swamp.

Kraglin's nose twitched. He pushed out a snotty gust. Then his muzzle retracted, and he padded away.

Yondu lay still, and _breathed._

Gone. He’d gone.

How far? Yondu had no way to tell. How much intelligence had Kraglin retained? Was he smart enough to bait Yondu out of hiding?

Perhaps he hunkered down along the straight stretch of the boar track, ready to charge as soon as he left his den. Perhaps he was snooping around the trees, hoping to attack him from the rear.

Yondu itched to peep, to press his eye to the chink in the ferns through which dappled green forest-light spilled. Too dangerous. He couldn’t risk it. He listened instead, straining for the crash of twigs that preceded a charge.

Silence.

The wet crunch of Kraglin's paws faded, along with the slap of tattered boots and that hungry, whiffling breath.

Yondu heard nothing. Nothing but the pulse in his ears and the faint swish of the bracken and the squidge as he settled on a half-rotten log.

Yondu willed the shake from his legs. Fear wouldn't help him. Adrenaline turned his limbs to blancmange; once you let it run rampant, getting it back under bridle was about as futile as squeezing sentiment from a stone. Yondu counted his inhales and focused on the catkins in front of his face.

Not catkins, as it turned out. The tree was a dead white husk. Furled red things dangled from its boughs – but they weren't seed pods, as he'd initially assumed.

 _Chrysalises._ Each the approximate length of his finger, translucent veering on opaque. Red, all of them – red as the implant Kraglin ripped from his deforming skull.

Yondu turned to the nearest branch. The tremor left his hands slowly. If he squinted, he could see a tiny larva encased in the pod. A white glow emanated from its tail, which curled as it twisted, locked in the throes of a womb-dream.

Huh. He'd always wondered where the fireflies came from.

Releasing the branch, Yondu set to tallying his wounds. His pants were scuffed as the rest of him, but they protected his legs from the worst of the flaying. His torso wasn't so lucky. Yondu needed more leaves, more paste, and he needed them fast.

He stripped the nearest fern. The methodical tug of sharp leaves soothed the prey-response from his brain. He popped them into his mouth, one by one, crunching them to mush, face scrunched at the chlorophyll tang. Once he had a smooth paste he smeared it over himself, coating his shoulders, stomach, and what parts of his upper back he could reach.

 

_Ship. Barricade. Quill._

He could do this. More importantly, he had to. 

_Ship, barricade, Quill. Ship, barricade Quill._

Easy, right? Certainly couldn’t be any harder than leading a Ravager horde for three decades, or busting open the great vaults of the A’askavarian bank.

 

He eased a tentative hand through the leaves. No victorious growl. No pounce. No claws, shearing it off at the wrist. 

He slunk out, tense and sweating. The track stood empty. It bored through the forest in either direction, swerving around the trees. Yondu’s imagination ran rampant, projecting long-legged creatures to skulk through the boughs, hungry red eyes to track him from under the roots of the trees.

But there was nothing. Only the rippling canopy, the quiet chirr of wildlife slinking from their holes, the stir of the thick, peaty breeze.

His little muntjac had better run fast. Yondu wished he'd sourced a larger scapegoat; Kraglin would swallow her in a second, dislocating his jaw and gulping her down like a snake. If anything, he'd given the guy an appetizer.

But for now at least, Kraglin was gone. Nothing Yondu could do for him. If he wanted to save Kraglin, first he had to save himself.

His cut feet stirred blood into the leaf litter as he trudged towards his flightless bird. The gaze of a phantom beast bored into his back, but it vanished whenever he checked over his shoulder.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Doubtlessly this needs an edit. I'll attend to it in the morning..... For now, kudos and comments? x**


	7. I'm Proud of Where I Came From

There was nothing quite like being master of your own ship.

Peter Quill stood on the _Milano's_ topside. Technically speaking, 'top' only existed in the minds of gravity-dwellers, but it was called that for ease of navigation and repairs.

His forcefield fluttered against his skin, engulfing his hands in broken-ice patterns of electric. No wind roared against his face, although they shot along at several kliks per second. His magnetized boots clamped him to the _Milano's_ chassis, suspending him in a magnificent sparkling tapestry: the space he had dreamed of as a child.

“Peter?” Gamora's voice crackled in his ear. It drowned out the Zune, currently humming a song called _Space Oddity_ (which ought to be named 'Ground Control to Major Tom', as Peter couldn't get those lyrics out of his head).

He didn't hold it against her – she wouldn't interrupt him unless it was important. Anyway, he'd listened to this one at least fifty times already.

Peter poked the side of his space-mask, activating his transmitter. “Yeah?”

“You realize you're supposed to be scouting for repairs? We need to know what’s leaking so we can factor it into our costing next time we make port.”

She sounded fond rather than frustrated. As the _Milano_ had yet to putter to a halt, still pootling merrily towards Xandar-space, Peter assumed the damage wasn't severe. His ship was a hardy thing. She'd been rebuilt – again – after her crash on Berhert, with the help of Stakar's faction.

That was the only assistance Peter accepted. All offers of legitimacy and employment had been turned resolutely down.

There was a reason Yondu didn't go back. Peter wanted to pry, to interrogate Kraglin when he sloped out of a conference at the captains' table and spent three days hiding from his responsibilities on the _Milano,_ glaring out of porthole windows in the direction of Yondu's retirement home.

But he knew Kraglin, like he knew himself well enough to never be alone in the same room as the Ravager High Command. Kraglin wasn't telling, whereas Peter told far too easily.

Peter performed a lazy sweep, just to appease Gamora. He tramped to the _Milano’s_ undercarriage and waggled his fingers at Groot.

The tiny tree had recovered from whatever spooked him on Yondu's planet – some sort of nightmare, according to Rocket. He seemed perfectly content, perched on the cockpit console, stuffing his gob with candy as he watched the nebula furl.

Peter had to lift his feet one at a time, always keeping a boot magnetized so that the _Milano_ didn't sweep out from under him and leave him tumbling. First time he did this on the _Eclector,_ Yondu threatened that if he fell, they wouldn't turn back. Peter had, and Yondu immediately ground the great engines to a halt before amassing a search party, M-ships pouring from hangars like wasps from a kicked nest.

But for half an hour, as Peter floated in the black a hundred kliks behind, he believed it was over. That this was how he died.

Alone in the dark, lost and lightless and unloved.

Now, of course, Yondu didn't have a blood-baying pack of pirates forcing him to keep a lid twisted down on his sentiment. He was still far from lovey-dovey, but when they erected the fence together, there'd been laughter and good-natured shoves and one-armed hugs and everything that Peter associated with the _good days,_ the days when it was just him and Yondu out on solos, when the old codger called Peter _son_ and ruffled his hair and told him how proud he was, before slipping back into his usual 'abusive boss' persona as soon as another Ravager ship flagged on radar.

It had been confusing, and disturbing, and Peter never knew when to expect a smack or a smile. Looking back, he _understood._ He knew why Yondu acted the way he did, and recognized that he kept him at arms' distance for his own safety. But that didn't mean he forgave.

It wasn't the swats he held against him, delivered open-handed to his cheeks or the back of the head. But Yondu made himself so unpredictable that Peter still caught himself flinching whenever his crewmates raised their hands.

Understanding didn't fix things, at the end of the Cycle. A part of Peter worried he would resent Yondu forever, just a little. Like he resented him for never explaining things directly, never once resting big warm palms on Peter's shoulders, looking him in the eye, and saying _hey boy, you's my son. I can't say so when there's others around, because they'll most likely kill us both. But that don't make it any less real._

Perhaps that was why Rocket spent more time shuttling to Yondu's jungle-grotto than he did, to marvel at its sticky-hot air and the firefly displays after dark. He never had to suffer through the intermediary years, as the Ravager captain grew to see Peter as his own. He just got the end product, broad yellow grins and head pats and all. So of course he was enthusiastic as he bounded over the console, nabbing the transmitter from Gamora's hands.

“Hey, Quill! Blue’s calling!”

Not so strange. Yondu checked in every now and then – superficially to make sure Rocket and Groot had made it back to their ship. He always asked after Peter though, albeit with pauses and glowers and coughs into his collar.

The posturing was familiar. But nowadays, Peter sensed the genuine _concern_ underneath. It germinated happy floaty feelings in his chest, as if he could kick off and fly.

Which technically, he could. But he didn't want to leave his crew with the hassle of retrieving him, not with Yondu on the line.

“You take it,” he said, frowning as he pinpointed a rupture in the _Milano's_ chassis.

Globs of fuel hung mid-air for a split second, suspended within the forcefield, before whipping away into oblivion. They smattered far behind: an oily breadcrumb trail. Not enough to slow them dramatically, but it explained why their reserves kept draining faster than expected.

 

"I'll be right up.”

And he was. Although he fully intended on lingering over the engines and making Yondu wait, just so the old idjit didn't start thinking Peter was bound to his beck and call, the next time the comm sizzled to life, Rocket started babbling before the static cleared.

“What? Slow down – the hell you saying?”

“Yondu,” spat his friend. Peter knew from the beeps that he was plugging a new course, steering them away from Xandar, back towards Yondu's asteroid. Given the tremor in his voice, Peter didn't complain about the lack of consultation.

“What's going on?” he snapped, straight to business. “Yondu, is he –?“

“He's in trouble, Quill. It ain’t good.”

Peter didn’t waste time hashing out the details. He hurried to the airlock, clamping and uncoupling his mag-boots as quickly as he dared.

 

* * *

 

 

The nature of that trouble however, was almost beyond belief. Peter laughed for all of ten seconds – the ten seconds it took for him to realize Yondu had yet to join in.

“Shit,” he said, leaning towards the glitching image. “You're serious? Kraglin's really gone loco? And he's really, uh, trying to…”

“Eat me,” Yondu growled.

“Ironic.”

“I flarkin’ _knew_ you was gonna say that. Laugh it up while you got the chance. Now, are y’all gonna come save my ass, or do ya plan on leavin' me here for lunch?”

Peter couldn’t blame him for being tetchy. Yondu looked like shit. The projection was far from top-quality; a hundred pixels composed Yondu's image, each hexagonal speckle a subtly different shade of blue. When Gamora amended their course, the surge of thrusters made fault-lines cross his stubble-hatched cheeks, the sunken sockets of his eyes.

He looked like a man who'd run for his life. Over rough terrain too. Peter peered at the ointment slathered over Yondu’s chest and arms. He enhanced the picture, studying where blood and leaf-mulch mingled in a turquoise paste.

“I hope you plan on rinsing those wounds,” Drax said. Yondu spared him a flat look.

“Yeah, I'mma just walk out to the stream, in the forest where my mate is prowlin' about like a bilgesnipe what's hungerin' for blood. Sounds like a great idea.”

Drax balked. “No, that's a terrible idea! You need to stay where you are and await rescue!”

Yondu flicked his glare at Peter. “Can I talk t'someone with more than two braincells?”

There he went again – defaulting to anger whenever he encountered a situation he couldn't whistle his way out of. Easier to snipe at everyone around you than admit your own vulnerability.

A blister swelled from one corner of his chapped lips,  where a branch had lashed his face. The arrow rested on his lap, glinting in the low-ebbing sun as Drax protested that the average number of neurons for his species was closer to the region of billions. Useless, of course.

 

He squeezed it too tight, knucklebones standing out against the blue. And although he was scowling at the lot of them, like it was their fault he needed an assist, Peter couldn't ignore the quiver in his shoulders – no matter how much Yondu might want him to.

“Yondu,” he said softly. “Are you okay?”

In hindsight, he should've known better. Yondu drew himself up in preparation to yell – then hastily shrunk, glancing around as if afraid moving too fast would have something unlatching from the shadows.

“My mate just turned into a fuckin' monster and tried to make me breakfast. Yeah, I'm a lil' freaked out.”

Rocker frowned. “Do you mean mate as in 'first mate'? Because you're a little outdated there -”

“Not the time.” Gamora was browsing through some sort of database. “Yondu – did you see him? Is there anything you can tell us that might help us to identify what he's become? You're sure it _is_ Kraglin? Not a Skrull copy?”

“If it is, it's a fuckin' excellent one. I was with him a week before he turned fully, an' this came on slow. Them frilly-chinned bastards don't got the patience for a long con – they'da killed me first night.”

His voice scratched low, rough as his broken skin. He rubbed up and down his biceps, looking a second away from squeezing for comfort. Then he remembered his audience and jerked his head up to glare, jaw jutted mutinously forward.

“It's him, okay. It's Kraglin. Don't know what the hell caused this, don't know much of anything. Except that he held off the... whatever it was so I could escape. Cut my door to shit, made himself bleed. He didn't want to let it kill me.”

Peter's mouth thinned. It was getting less easy to laugh this off as a practical joke. Kraglin, hunting the man he'd stood beside for over three decades? That seemed impossible, unthinkable, like a scene pulled from a parallel dimension. But Kraglin being so frantic, so desperate not to hurt his captain that he would snap his own fingers, gouge open his veins?

“He's injured then,” Drax said, with a nod. “He should go down quickly.”

“Nah. Closed right up as I was watchin'.” Yondu shuddered, so small and repressed it could almost be explained away as a flux in the pixels. Almost. “He was blue, y'know.”

“Blue? Like...” Peter gestured to him, but Yondu shook his head.

“Naw. Darker. _Hairier._ Fuzzy all over, like an animal – no offence, Rat. And he were shufflin' about on all fours as well. Mighty fast – like it were more comfortable. And... and his eyes...”

Gamora scrolled through species designations faster than Peter could keep up with. “What about his eyes?” she asked.

Yondu failed to answer, squeezing the arrow until his tendons stood out of his fist. Groot was there to fill in.

“I am Groot.”

There it was again. The face of a demon, eyes bleeding red and blue again.

Not a nightmare after all. This was real - which made it so much worse.

Gamora was first to compose herself. Her fingers skittered over the holographic keys, inputting attributes as rapidly as Yondu could name them. “Compound eyes, like an insect. Correct?”

“I am Groot.”

“Bright red, or dark?”

“Bright,” croaked Yondu. “Brighter than mine.”

“Alright. It'll take a while for the algorithm to work – it's scrolling through every known species in the Xandarian database. Yondu, what do you know of Kraglin's past?”

Yondu shrugged, a twitch of his shoulders. “What d'you mean?”

“Where he came from, where he grew up... There might be some clues there.”

“We have all that on file,” Peter began, but when Mantis laid her little palm on his arm, his mouth snapped shut. Not even because she coerced him – she didn't so much _push_ as _present,_ a silent and wordless communication that nevertheless conveyed all it needed to.

Gamora wasn't asking out of necessity. She was asking because it was gonna take them an hour to reach Yondu's asteroid at top speed, and he could do to be kept talking.

“He's an orphan,” said Yondu. Gamora nodded along, not bothering to spare sympathy – they were all in the same boat. “Foundling. Grew up in one of them Xandarian homes; tried fostering but it didn't stick.”

Rocket, having hacked a Nova database to corroborate, clicked his clawtip off his pad. “Says here he was too, uh, feral.”

Yondu snorted. “Sounds about right. What's his medical file say?”

A scroll, a flutter of lights, a twitch of a whiskered nose. “That he's allergic to a whole bunch of common pollens. Ain't that weird, for a predator-species?”

“I've never seen a bilgesnipe sneeze,” Drax agreed. Rocket snapped his fingers.

“But who's to say that he woulda done, on his native planet? Hey, Gamora – look for worlds where the make-up of the plant matter don't fit the interplanetary norm, then cross-reference the results against your species list.”

Gamora nodded. She set to work immediately, the reflection from the data-spool dancing in her eyes.

Peter's exhale sapped strain from his neck, strain he hadn't even realized he was holding. _Kraglin._ A shapeshifter?

He'd been one of the constants in Peter's life – along with Yondu, Tullk, Oblo, Horuz, and the threat of being made into stew if he didn't complete his chores to the captain's satisfaction. Kraglin Obfonteri, cap'n's most-loyal. Always hovering at Yondu’s elbow with a snide grin and a jibe.

Peter hated him for the longest time. The guy looked human, but he always took Yondu's side over Peter's, and to the mind of a young and lonely Terran, that made him a traitor. His bumbling attempts at conversation when they were alone together usually wound up with him ordering Peter about, Peter ignoring him, and Kraglin doling out scutwork in the name of discipline.

But despite that, Kraglin was one of the rare crewmates who'd never tried to boil Peter into stock.

He looked like a sidekick – or a toothpick, more accurately. Even with the fin, he didn't cut a particularly menacing figure. He'd always just been... There. By his captain's side, in his shadow, a suffix to Yondu’s name.

And now this.

Had it been lurking in him the whole time? A dormant trait, magma under the surface?

Peter reassessed every time he'd rolled his eyes and thought _ugh, it's only Kraglin. What's he supposed to do?_

“You hold on,” he told Yondu, over the churning algorithm on the display board. Fifty-five minutes until landfall.  “We're on our way.”

 

* * *

 

 

They docked as quietly as possible, settling the  _Milano_ besides Kraglin's M-ship like a pair of roosting doves. Their nest was a drift of dry bracken chips, lemur droppings, and sheddings from the overhanging  _kushi_ tree: a carpet of worm-pitted fruit and red-gold lanceolate leaves.

The jungle opened before them. They prowled along the boar track, brandishing plasma pistols to the left and right. Torches, strapped to their barrels, illuminated the forest like the snaps of a camera shutter.

Bloated tree-trunks. Waterlogged roots. Delicate fronds of fungi, bark stripped in parallel scratches where a beast had run its claws.

Fireflies swirled in silence. The air was a hot thick soup.

Yondu insisted that they didn't kill Kraglin – something Peter seconded. He still heaved a sigh when they reached the hut without springing an ambush. If they had to choose between Kraglin and a Guardian… Well, Peter's trigger finger might hesitate, but Gamora and Drax’s wouldn’t.

Yondu stunk of sweat and crushed leaves. He stumbled as he climbed the gang plank, bare toes skidding on metal slick with condensed steam. Peter gripped his shoulder, nudging him to find his balance.

But it wasn't him Yondu squinted at. His stare honed on Kraglin's M-ship. More specifically, the collection of shinies on his dashboard: a homage to a captain the galaxy thought long-dead.

One of those shinies was moving.

Peter frowned. He pushed Yondu ahead. He paused there, last of them up the ramp, head cocked to one side as he squinted through the glass.

Yep – two little red dots. Bobbing. They were definitely bobbing.

Growing, too.

“Peter! Behind you!”

Snarl. Crunch. Feet bounded over roots. The ferns burst in a dry thunder.

_Don’t look back. You’ll only waste time._

Two steps carried Peter into the hold. Gamora grabbed him, hauling him the rest of the way.

Fast. Not quite fast enough.

Kraglin lunged. His claws snagged Peter's boot-jets. They cleaved straight through the thruster mount and out the other side. The strap snapped. It pinged Peter’s ankle, sparks scything knife-bright in the gloom.

Peter kicked and kicked. He didn't know where he was aiming - or if he was aiming at all. Everything jerked so fast, so sudden, and he didn't have time to think. He lashed out wildly, catching Kraglin across the muzzle.

Score one for Peter Quill -  Kraglin sailed off the loading ramp, bowling through the undergrowth ass over ears.

Peter scrabbled backwards over the rubber airlock seal, brain throbbing white-hot and ankle hotter.

“Raise the ramp, Rocket! Now!”

A growl shuddered up from below. Guttural.  _Hungry_.

Kraglin rolled out of the bush, landing on all fours. He shook away his crown of twigs, then cocked his head, staring directly at Peter.

Peter's stomach lurched. He’d been prepared for this, after Yondu’s story, but now, in the moment, it still seemed beyond crazy.

He couldn't believe it. It was impossible. Was this thing – deformed, furry, twitching – really him? Really  _Kraglin?_

Bony limbs stretched into a knuckle-dragging shape that slunk more easily on four legs than two. Two demonic tufts sprouted from either side of his head, more fur bulging from the shreds in his jumpsuit. He was dark blue, as Yondu had claimed. A stalking extension of the night.

And those eyes...

“I am Groot,” whimpered their youngest, cradled against Mantis's chest. Drax, Gamora and Peter brandished their weapons in the entrance, daring Kraglin to make another rush. “ _I am Groot._ ”

Rocket punched the button. The ramp folded in a dense concertina, dripping chunks of swamp. Yondu, who Peter had instinctively moved in front of, stepped around him. Peter made to grab his wrist, stop him doing anything stupid – like calling Kraglin's name, or reaching out.

But while Yondu might be a fraction more sentimental than he pretended, he wasn't an idiot. He simply watched Kraglin through the closing crack in the blast doors, until all he could see were those ember-bright eyes, then his fangy snarl, then nothing.

“Get us in the air,” he said quietly.

Peter didn't rib him for giving orders to his crew. He nodded, hands tense around their pistol grip.

Rocket cranked on the headlamps. White light gushed to fill the clearing, rebounding off snapped branches and clumps of resin, petrified mid-drip.

But of Kraglin? Of Yondu’s mate-turned-monster, there was no sign.

 

* * *

 

 The cut on his ankle had just begun to sting.

Peter rolled his pant leg up and his sock down, boot discarded on the bunk besides. A shard of plastic was all that remained of his left jet. Peter thought ahead for once in his life; he unbuckled the right one so he wouldn't activate them in an emergency and waste an undignified minute spinning in circles.

Yondu sat next to him. As Peter gave the gouge a check, wincing as he explored the negative impression of Kraglin's claw, Yondu stared at the washcloth and bowl he'd been provided with, under advisement to scrub off the rest of the leaf-mush off before it poisoned his blood.

He wasn't moving. Peter elbowed him.

“C'mon, you doof. Wash up before you start smelling like a compost heap. Or, y'know. More like a compost heap than usual.”

Yondu lifted the cloth to his forehead, movements odd and stilted. Not quite  _automatic_. More as if he was obeying the order without really thinking about it. It made Peter uncomfortable – because the Yondu he knew never took shit from anyone, let alone  _commands._

Yondu never shared that nasty slice of his past, the one Rocket disclosed while regaling them with his adventures on the  _Eclector._ At the time, Peter nodded like he'd known all along. It was that or make his buddy feel guilty about spilling a secret that wasn't his.

But those words –  _battle slave, twenty years –_  still haunted his mind.

They curdled at its edges now, a clotted clump of pity and frustration and  _dammit Yondu, why didn't you tell me?_ Because if Yondu died in the void, as they all assumed he would, the blast of Ego's core the closest he'd come to a Ravager funeral, Peter would only have realized at the very last minute that he meant more to him than he'd always claimed – _the a-hole who abducted me and threatened to eat me and worked me like a slave._

Not like a slave at all, in hindsight.

If Peter voiced all that, Yondu would most likely punch him. He looked like he was resisting the urge, as it clicked that he’d obeyed Peter’s command. He directed his scowl at the washcloth in lieu of a mirror. He kept cleaning, scraping the gunk away in concentric circles, and let his terse voice fill the silence, which simmered towards awkward the longer it was left.

“So. Ya find out what Kraglin's turned into?”

Not 'what he is'. Not 'if he can be turned back' either. That was good – Peter didn't have a definitive answer. While Gamora's algorithm had been fairly conclusive, they were still figuring out how an A-Chiltarian found itself at a Nova adoption agency.

“Yeah,” he said. “They're called 'A-Chiltarians'. Not much info on them – they’re thought to be extinct, bar those in, uh, private zoos.”

Yondu snorted, although there wasn't much humor in it. “Private zoos? Don't tell me I been committin' bestiality all these years.”

Peter did his best not to imagine that. “Don't worry,” he said faintly, squeezing the bridge of his nose to blot any thoughts of Yondu and Kraglin testing their mattress-elasticity. “They're higher life forms. Just on the, uh, fluffy side.”

In truth, he wasn’t sure how much of the information on the database was fabricated by colonisers. Species didn’t just go extinct, not without help. But he did his best to reassure Yondu with what little he’d learnt.

Yondu wasn’t grateful.

“What the fuck happened here then, huh? Ya might've noticed, Quill, but that weren't the Kraglin we all know an' love.”

Of course, the only time that word entered Yondu's vocabulary, he was being sarcastic. If it nettled Peter's heart to leave Kraglin on that asteroid, Yondu's must be outright breaking – not that he'd admit it, the stubborn old sod. However, it wasn't as if they had much choice. Discharging enough stun-blasts to keep Kraglin incapacitated for the journey would fry any mental processes he had left.

Peter reminded himself, not for the first time, that getting snippy wouldn’t help. Yondu had almost been mauled and devoured by the man who sworn himself to his flame, who had a prosthetic implanted just because Yondu asked him to, and who stood by him from that first exile, through mutinies, desertions and job busts, to a suicide run on a living planet and beyond.

And on top of that, right now Yondu was vulnerable. No arrow. No defences. Just an aging blue guy, more scar than skin, who shied from the arm Quill wrapped around him before catching himself and snapping instead.

Quill retreated before he lost a finger.

“It's gonna be okay,” he tried. The words fell glib from his mouth. Yondu's scowl morphed into a full-blown sneer.

Bad call. Peter backtracked.

“Well. Obviously it's not  _okay_. Not yet. But it will be. We've scheduled a meet with the Collector, and” -

“I ain't sellin' Krags to that jackass!”

“Good, because we're not either. No one's selling anything to anyone, Yondu.”

Yondu's arrow lay on the coverlets besides him, along with the bio-scanner he'd swept up with what few trinkets accompanied him to the asteroid, the ones spared incineration on his pyre. He gripped it now. His nails scraped the yaka hard enough to crack.

“Kraglin ain't a thing.”

“I know, I didn't mean -”

“Forget it.” Yondu smacked the filthy washcloth off Peter's shoulder. Dropping the arrow, he rested his palms on his lap and glared at the tatty flesh there, underlip jutted in what Peter would, on anyone less likely to cuff his ear, describe as a pout. “He ripped out the prosthetic, y'know.”

“He – what?”

It registered, during that panicked flight to the ship: the lack of red on Kraglin's scalp. Peter didn’t  _acknowledge_ it though, if only because for the majority of the years he'd known him, Kraglin's defining feature had been a scraggly little mohawk, as unkempt as his beard.

The prosthetic jarred his mind whenever he saw it. It was a piece of Yondu crudely transposed; a foreign parasite fused to Kraglin's skull. Apparently, subconsciously or otherwise, Kraglin harbored similar thoughts.

But regardless of whether the mutilation was self-inflicted, that was still a pretty serious wound. Yondu's prosthetic slotted into the brain. When Nebula shot him, she only grazed the top crystals. That had been enough to knock him out. Peter dreaded to think what damage might be caused by yanking it out at the root.

“Shit. Does he need medi-aid?”

He'd been moving fine when Peter saw him. More than fine. He prowled in a too-fluid lope: hindlegs powering him forwards while forelegs took up the slack. But the darkness made it impossible to tell whether his hair, wafting in the pollen-laden breeze, was chunky with dried blood or trapped twigs.

Yondu shook his head.

“Healing factor of some sort. No wonder he's gotta eat so much.” He laughed to himself, a hoarse rattle under his breath. “Let's hope he don't chow down on every other animal on that rock. I like a bit of meat in my diet.”

“I’ll grab you some from storage tonight.” Peter gnawed his cheek before reaching a decision. Then he shunted a little closer, thigh bumping Yondu's.

The cabin was unnaturally quiet, compared to the usual overcrowded bustle of the M-ship – almost as if Gamora had put her fist through the lock-panel to ensure their privacy.

Peter wasn't complaining. It meant that he could let his hand rest besides Yondu's, two points of pressure that pulled the cheesy old blanket down towards them. Beneath their palms, the sheet formed a shallow crater.

Peter dropped his hand over Yondu's. He felt gnarled knuckles, bobbly veins, and a well-disguised flinch.

The crater steepened as the pressure point shrunk. The hand under Peter's was broad, if not quite as long, and when Peter curled his fingers round it, it refused to return the squeeze.

“It'll be okay,” said Peter again, because he had nothing else to offer.

Yondu didn't reply. He nodded once – a taut jerk of the chin, up and down – before wrenching his hand out from under Peter's, pushing to his feet, and stalking for the door.

“You want a shirt?” Peter called after him.

Yondu demonstratively scooped a bundle of what Peter had assumed were spare pillowcases off the mattress. He shook it out to reveal a familiar collar and two sleeves, plus a squiggle of A’askavarian writing that most likely read  _dumb tourist_. “Already borrowed one.”

“Stolen, Yondu! Stolen's the word you're looking for.”

There was a snort of what might have been laughter. Yondu stood on the threshold, facing away, the bright overheads highlighting the crusty bite marks on his neck. Before Peter could ask pointless questions –  _D_ _id Kraglin do that? Does it hurt? Are you sure you're okay?_ – he pulled the collar over the serrated implant shards, rolled up the cuffs when they flopped over his hands, and left.

The washcloth seeped through Peter's jacket. The leather was waterproof, practically varnished what with how smooth it had worn over the years. But around the seam between sleeve and shoulder, the stitches sagged loose, the lining frayed, the leather teased apart. It was enough – just – for an enterprising drip.

It soaked outwards as soon as it hit the synth-cotton of Peter's shirt. The chill crept through him like mildew on a porthole pane. Peter left the cloth there as it numbed his shoulder, staring at the bowl of scrubbed-off dressings until his stomach rebelled.

The Collector could tell them more. He kept the other last-known specimen under lock, key, several security droids, and probably a booby trap that melted interlopers' faces like that scene from  _Raiders_ that gave a young Terran nightmares.

Not that Peter ever complained, as he begged mom to let him watch that movie in the first place – but anyway. He digressed.

When they explained their predicament, the Collector offered them intel. Possibly even assistance. None of them were stupid enough to hope it would be on-the-house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry for the wait!! I've been on holiday with my partner :3 Thank you to everyone who leaves kudos and comments. Especially comments. Y'all are my favourite people. Major thanks to Havicat and Bridgh for your incredible long reviews!!**


	8. I was Born and Raised in the Boondocks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hey kids! It's exposition time. Seriously. Nothing else happens in this chapter. 8I**

The Collector's gallery was an infinite mirror-hall of cages that extended back, and back, and back, far beyond where proportion and logic dictated the far wall should lie.

Hands dragged down glass, misted with greasy build-up from the occupants' breath. Through the translucent walls of each cell, a figure was visible: sitting, standing, curled in a foetal hunch. They mumbled to themselves in languages Yondu didn't know and had no care to learn.

Not his people. Not his problem.

Yeah, he'd merrily butcher any Kree he got his hands on, especially if they called him _slave._ But the Collector? Man was an Ancient, with a capital A. There was some shit in this galaxy you didn't fuck with – although admittedly, that had been Yondu's rule about Celestials too, until a certain moon-sized asshole buzzed onto his holodeck with the offer of a lifetime.

The progeny of that planetary buttmunch was doing everything he could not to acknowledge the cages. Just like Yondu taught him. If you couldn't control your conscience, you gave it another task to focus on – like saving Kraglin's sorry life. Or at the very least, his personality.

Kraglin was the whipcord rake of a man who liked to snuggle up to Yondu's back and scratch whiskery kisses over his scars. The man who stood by Yondu's side no matter how deep a cesspit his decisions landed them in. He rolled his eyes and sniped and muttered 'I told you so', but he never, ever walked away.

Dammit. If he kept thinking like this, Yondu would have no choice but to acknowledge how much he missed the bastard.

Stars knew _why._ They averaged a month without seeing each other nowadays, what with Kraglin's big new fancy job:  _official captain of the new 99th._ Yondu never got in the habit of pining for him like some floozy in a B-rated Shi'ar rom-com, and he didn't plan to start.

But regardless, for some reason, three days without him made Yondu's chest seize up. His lungs tightened like his ribs were trying to inflate stone.

“Can ya do it,” he said hoarsely, cutting across the Collectors' blather about how wonderful it was to confirm that his specimen wasn’t the sole survivor of the genocide. His fists ached, boring into his thighs to stop him diving across the table and burying them knuckle-deep in the bastard's ruff. “Can ya bring him back or not?”

There was something ghastly in the starched white stretch of the Collector's smile. Like a skull, or a doll left out to bleach in the light of a supergiant.

“Of course,” he said, twisting to face them one by one. Yondu was struck by the sudden thought that if the Collector so willed it, his head would carry right on spinning, all the way around and back again like an unscrewing bolt. “For a price.”

“Yondu...” Yondu shook Quill's restraining hand off. He didn't need it. He stretched his fists, working the cramp from his tendons, and laid both palms flat on the table.

“What d'you want?” he asked, looking the Collector dead in his creepy white eyes. “I'll getcha anythin', cept his body.”

The Collector might have seen a thousand civilizations prosper and crumble, but he smirked like a mortal man – an amused one, at that.

“'Anything'. That's a very good deal from my perspective, Udonta.”

“Too good,” said Quill through clenched teeth. Rocket nodded his agreement.

All seven of them – Quill, Yondu, the slightly-less-homicidal Daughter of Thanos, the Rat, the Twig, the Big Guy and the Bug – fanned out opposite the Collector. Their stools had been laid out for them when they arrived. The Collector only miscalculated by one. That, he had to fetch specially - it was currently graced by Yondu's posterior.

Yondu couldn't blame him. He was a dead man, by all accounts. Not the sort of guy you expected to storm in your front door and start demanding information about a species registered on all official Nova documentation as _extinct._

The Collector rested his smile on steepled fingertips. “For a beginner's fee, in exchange for the information I am about to reveal, I want the tale of your miraculous resurrection.”

Yondu scowled. “Information doesn't do me shit, whitey.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” came the mild reply. Then, when Quill jolted in his seat - “One of your Terran phrases, yes?”

“Y-yeah.”

“And what, pray tell, does it mean?”

Rocket scoffed, slouching low. It was a position Yondu would very much like to emulate – and would, if Kraglin's sanity wasn't at stake. “You already know, whitey. What's with the riddles?”

The Collector ignored him, ostensibly for the sole purpose of pissing Rocket off. “Enlighten us if you would, Mr Quill.”

Rocket's black lips crept up his gum, muzzle wrinkling back on itself. The Collector's only tell was a twitch of his smirk.

Usually, that would earn Yondu's respect. He too took great delight in pushing buttons. But he took markedly less in watching the buttons of someone he may, in the depths of his wizened old heart, actually _like,_ be pushed.

He grabbed Rocket's shoulder before the little guy could fly off the chair and start swinging. He pressed him firmly back.  _Not now._

Quill watched the exchange. He alternated between haranguing his bottom lip and the fleshy insides of his cheek.

“It means,” he said hesitantly, “that brute force isn't the answer. We're not going to get anywhere if we don't know what we're dealing with – what _Kraglin's_ dealing with, right now. So… so strong-arming this guy ain't gonna work. We gotta play by his rules.”

The Collector nodded. “The most sensible thing you've said in quite some time, I'm sure.”

Drax reached for his knife, muttering something about _don't talk to my friends like that._ Gamora dissuaded him with a shake of her head, while Groot, perched alone on a chair several sizes too large, nervously pruned green sprigs from his knees.

The Collector lounged back, crossing his legs. “I will divulge my share first, as Udonta is so reticent. I assume the Xandarian encyclopaedia informed you of his basic stats?”

After a silent back-and-forth with Gamora, Quill nodded.

“Good. I shall skip the extended history lesson – about a quasi-feral hunter people, very territorial and with no interest in trade, who reaved all ships that passed through their star system until a trade route was established and they had to be eradicated for the safety of both merchants and profits.”

Mantis scrunched her face into petite and pretty confusion. “But you just said you would not give us a history lesson...”

Drax patted her knee. “He was being metaphorical."

The Collector spread his hands. “If I may continue? Thank you. The A-Chiltarians were given the choice to abandon their territory peacefully or fight to the last. Most chose the latter. But there were a few – young parents in particular – who did not wish to watch their children die. A hundred or so babies were shipped off that planet in the dead of the night, still within their larval state, so that when they hatched they might imprint on whoever they first saw.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Quill, despite the dire nature of the situation, appeared to be holding in a laugh. “'Imprint'? Like a baby duckling?”

“A baby what-now?” Rocket asked. The Collector was already shaking his head.

“No, no! Far more sophisticated. An A-Chiltarian in the larval pod is much like a lightning bug in chrysalis. Formless mush. Slice it open, and you find only slime. It's not an uncommon growth phase, among species from that region of the quadrant." He bypassed the quiet exclamations of 'gross' (from all but Mantis, who was nodding along as if this sounded perfectly normal). “Like those other species, a grub will form after a short incubation period. However, where A-Chiltarians differ is that they have developed a remarkable defence mechanism, one that is almost entirely unique.”

He let that hang, impregnating the pause with suspense. It reached the third trimester within ten seconds. Impatient, Yondu leaned forwards, elbows on the desk, as close as he could get to looming without his ass leaving the chair.

“Geddon with it,” he growled, as the Collector recoiled from his breath. “Kraglin don't got time for drama.”

The Collector retrieved a handkerchief from a breast pocket hidden behind his boa. He pressed it none-too-subtly over his nostrils.

“That mechanism is as follows,” he continued. “When the pod cracks, that blank slate will open its eyes, and take an infant form of whatever it sees.”

“Impossible,” said Gamora, at the same time that Drax said “Improbable” and Quill said “Cool!”

Yondu simply listened, and absorbed, and pictured every inch of Kraglin's face in perfect high-definition, from the deepening creases under his eyes to the steely stubble at his temples, the brown frizz of his beard, his beak of a nose, his eyes that always looked a touch too large for the face that contained them.

“So there's hundreds,” he croaked, because that was something to focus on other than the thought that he'd never wake up besides that face, being blasted by its cheesy halitosis, ever again. “Hundreds like him, out there? They ain’t extinct after all?”

The Collector shrugged. “Their records were sealed for their own protection. It was... an experiment, to tell the truth. While the A-Chiltarians were aware of their unique ability, in all prior known cases, the mimicry wore off after the child was exposed to its own people for a significant period. Or, failing that, when they came of age. They would enter rut or heat, as is customary for their species, transform, go live wild hunting prey in the forests and – to spare our young ears – _wildly frolicking_ for a week before returning to civilization.”

“I am Groot?”

“We'll tell you when you're older,” said Quill. Then, as Groot blinked innocent eyes - “Much, _much_ older.”

Yondu hardly noticed. “They come back then? Ya said it right there – they return to civilization, right?”

“Yes. When undergoing controlled rut of medium-to-moderate intensity once a year. How old is Kraglin?”

Yondu found himself the center of attention. “Huh?”

“Dude.” Quill nudged his shoulder, and Yondu couldn't help but scowl, noticing how the shirt that fit his boy snug as leather baked tight by the sun hung loose around his own torso, belly the only part that didn't bag. “You'd know better than anyone.”

“I dunno exactly. Weren't like we ever kept track. But I'd say he's – what? Ten years younger'n me?”

“So five hundred and forty-five,” said Quill, straight faced, and obligingly said 'ow' when Yondu smacked the back of his head. “Sorry. Knock off a hundred.” Whap. “Or just forry-five! Okay, okay. Sheesh.”

“Most A-Chiltarians,” continued the Collector, “hit their first rut at sixteen. However, if he was raised entirely as a Xandarian, expected only to undergo the usual hormonal shifts that wreak havoc through the teenage body” –

Another tug at Rocket's pant leg, another quiet “I am Groot?” Rocket patted his head.

“All in good time, buddy. All in good time.”

“I can only assume he repressed it. And the next one. And the one after that. All the way until now.”

The pieces were all there, but they didn't add up. There was a disconnect in Yondu's mind, and try as he might he couldn't smash the blocks together in a way that fit.

“The hell triggered this then? What changed?”

“Trauma, I imagine. Mental, physical – possibly both.”

Oh. That.

Quill and Yondu shared a thin-lipped glance. Quill left Kraglin to his own devices after Ego's ashes had cooled, because he could be a prissy lil' bitch and waspish as hell if he thought he was being coddled. And Yondu? Yondu was never one for comfort in the first place.

Between that, and all Kraglin's other friends being dead... Well, the sight of his captain frozen solid by the void and the welding of an unwanted implant to his head might just do the trick.

“Shit,” Quill said. Yondu said it louder, followed with a tired slump of his face into his hands.

“ _Shit._ We shoulda seen this comin'. Or, y'know, not _this,_ but...”

“But you didn't.” The Collector helped himself to tea. He offered the pot, brows enquiring – not that he'd provided cups and saucers. He still seemed mildly disappointed when they declined. “And now, Udonta. I believe you owe me an explanation in return. Why did you fake your death?”

Wasn't that the million-dollar question? Yondu did what he did best. He deflected it.

“Cause I didn't wanna deal with Stakar's ugly mug anymore, thas why.”

Beside him – on both sides actually – the Guardians became progressively tense. Yondu knew why. He hadn't seen what he'd been like that first week back, when the floor kept disintegrating from under him whenever he took a step, but he'd wager it hadn't been pretty.

Truth be told, he didn't remember much. Stakar's forgiveness piled an entire hay bale onto a camel's broken back (an Earth-metaphor Yondu appreciated, although he didn't know what a camel was. Perhaps he'd try to teach it to Drax, when all this blew over – that promised an evening of entertainment.)

But whatever they'd seen during those long seven cycles, it convinced the Guardians that firstly, Yondu wasn't a threat to them (to his irritation, because configuring relationships with people who weren't shit-your-pants terrified of you was a foreign concept) and secondly that when he said he didn't want his arrow anymore, he meant it.

While the arrow's legacy earned them a wide berth from the usual throng of Knowhere pickpockets, it also invoked other shit, shit Yondu would rather leave behind. The infamy attached to the name _Udonta._ Everyone's expectations. Stakar's disappointment and the ringing words of banishment that haunted Yondu throughout his entire adult life.

Y'know. Little stuff like that.

The Collector took a measured sip. Steam billowed from his cup, and the water simmered and spat. It didn't bring color to his blanched cheeks, or even a drip to the end of his nose. He set the cup down with a fragile clink, and motioned for Yondu to continue.

“And?”

“I'd had enough, is all.”

“Enough? Just like that? The – and I quote, in your own words from the day you convinced me to hire you and your men in spite of Stakar's embargo – _the_ _toughest motherfrutarker in the galaxy_ just ups and leaves his post, his men, his title? The thrill of the hunt?”

Yondu had to swallow before replying. He hated every fiber of the Collector, from his ridiculous hair to the squeaky-buffed caps of his bilgesnipe-leather shoes. But he hated the glee in the Collector’s eyes most of all _._

“I hunt rabbits now,” he said. “Them's nifty lil' buggers. Fast as any Nova cruiser. Anyways, all my men're dead. I don't got nothing to go back to.”

“Except for Kraglin Obfonteri. I find that fascinating too. Last I heard, he instigated a mutiny – and yet here you are, begging for my help, that he might have his senses restored.” The Collector tapped each finger against his chin, feigning curiosity. Like he didn't already know - bastard was toying with him. He held every card, every chip. And, worst of all, he  _knew_ it. 

“Now why, Udonta, would you forgive a man who has wronged you so grievously? And why would you offer me _anything in the galaxy_ to bring him back to you?”

“He don't gotta answer that,” Rocket began, while the others sat frozen, spectators at an Orloni match, watching the poor screeching critter as the skrank guzzled it down. Yondu squeezed Rocket's shoulder again, just to stop him doing anything stupid.

“Anythin' in the galaxy except him.” He made a show of rearranging his arrow holster. “Now do we gotta deal, or don't we?”

The Collector hummed to himself. His dark eyes skated up and down. Yondu suffered the inspection grimly. He'd had worse. So what if it reminded him of being paraded before Kree gladiator owners and battle slave selection officers, his muscle squeezed and poked, his teeth checked and his crest tugged and his ankles hobbled by two pairs of cuffs attached to a bar?

Yondu had been perfecting his poker face for years. It was at times like these that he put it to use.

“Leave us,” said the Collector. His tea had an umami to it, a savory aroma that smelled more than it tasted. The scent clung, lingering at the back of Yondu's throat no matter how often he swallowed.

The Collector blew a fragrant steam-ring. He nodded to Quill and co., all of whom had yet to hustle. “All of you – go. I would speak to Udonta alone.”

Quill drew himself up. “We're not leaving him alone with” -

“Why not? Udonta can look after himself. Unless there's something you're not telling me. Udonta – I can't help but notice that your implant looks rather more _jagged_ than the last time we met. It is so very hard to source yaka crystal nowadays, no?”

Yondu treated him to a sneer. He took the time to show off his yellowed canines, plus the teeth that had been replaced with metal after they rotted out (or got punched, but either way they tinkled to rest in the _Eclector's_ dirty basin while a hissing captain probed the new bloody gap in his gum).

“Go,” he said to Quill, not looking at him.

Quill dithered. It was what he did best, other than blast music and dance and cause trouble. Yondu didn't have the patience for it. Not today.

“Go,” he repeated, punching Quill's bicep. It was meaty enough to absorb the blow, but Yondu's glare wasn't so easily dispelled. “Before I make ya.”

Quill couldn't say _without your arrow?_ Not without confirming the Collector's suspicions.

“We'll be right outside,” he said, before hoisting Groot onto his shoulder and ushering his team for the door: a colorful gaggle of miscreants and misfits and worse. _Family._ Quill's, of course, not his. But the way each and every one of them glanced back at him still warmed those old cockles in his chest.

He waited for the clamp and hiss of the blast door.

“Go on then,” he said, kicking one boot up on the desk. “Talk.”

“You will be grateful I dismissed them.” The Collector met his gaze over the rim of his teacup, steam swirling around kohl-painted eyelids. “This is not something that children ought to hear.”

 “I'll bite. What ain't?”

“How you pull an A-Chiltarian out of their rut, that's what.”

Oh. Well, perhaps Yondu was a little grateful after all. Still, no point hiding what the Collector already knew:

“I'd assume fuckin',” he drawled. “Except we tried that, an' he prefers me as lunch.”

The Collector stood in a rustle of velvet, elevating a single silver brow. “Because you don't smell like an A-Chiltarian female. I have an A-Chiltarian female.”

Yondu studiously ignored the cages and their contents. “Keep her shut back there, do ya?”

The Collector appeared taken aback. “Of course not. She is very well behaved – I permit her to roam in a holo-environment akin to her own lost world. Not even a lock on the door.” He took Yondu's incredulous snort as a cue to elaborate. “She got out once, but she didn't enjoy it. Her friends and family are dead; what is left for her in the wider galaxy? I keep her fed, I keep her safe. She may lack in companionship...”

Yondu smelled the trap before he sprung it.

“She ain't getting' Kraglin,” he growled, already half to his feet, clutching the arrow like a knife. The Collector waved him off.

“Indeed, she 'ain't'. More's the pity. Young A-Chiltarians copulate with conveniently shaped holes in tree-trunks when they rut, but once they initiate a Mating they tend towards monogamy. She lost her partner during the genocide, and will live out the rest of her life alone, regardless of how many of her race she surrounds herself with. As for Obfonteri...”

The Collector made another of those long and assessing pauses.

“You need not fear for him,” he said, just as Yondu prepared to tell him to take a holovid, because it would last longer. “She's not his just as he isn’t hers. However, this doesn't mean we can't use what nature has given her to our own advantage.”

Yondu drummed his nails on the arrow fletching. “What do you mean?”

Shadows eclipsed the Collector’s smirk. He stalked deeper into his lair, stroking a clean streak through the dust on a cage, making the captive creature cringe away from the light.

“Why don't you come and find out?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **:infodump over: Thank you to all my lovely commenters <3 And to everyone who leaves kudos too! Y'all rock. There'll be more on what happened to the A Chiltarians next time. I tried to keep it brief, because I could write an entire story just on worldbuilding for this one very niche 616 race. I hope it still gives you enough to sink your teeth into!**


	9. One Thing I Know, No Matter Where I Go

Walking into the forest should have felt familiar. It was the little things that threw Yondu off - like how the canopy blurred between grape and violet, leaves too small to be individually seen. They swung from each branch in bauble-like clusters, glittering in the sunlight.

Artificial sunlight, of course. The smouldering star on the horizon was no more real than the crunch of twigs under his boots, or the rush of a waterfall in the far distance, or the call of whooping birds. The only real things in this forest were him, the Collector, and that strange, tickling certainty that they were not alone.

“This is it?”

He passed his hand through the nearest tree trunk, back and forth. The hologram was almost perfect – bark scutes perhaps a little too regular, overlaid like scales in snakeskin. The moss looked soft and spongy, damp to the touch. It fractured into pixels when he poked it.

“This is his homeworld?”

“A reproduction of it, yes.”

In this little oasis, Tivvan looked nothing short of bizarre, like a chemical spill on an untouched world. His seedy finery didn't belong here. He was an extension of the Knowhere streets: the neon lights and the tatty junker shops, the slop-stations that doled out miner-mix every turn of every hour, the coder-bars bristling with aerials and humming with static, the Orloni-baiting rings, the beeping pachinko parlors and the bordellos that seeped sex into the alleyways to stew with the stink of hot, ripe garbage.

But here, it was all-too-easy to forget Knowhere existed.

Butterflies broiled overhead, their flight patterns calculated to keep them from clipping through their neighbor. Yondu couldn't count them all, but they came in every color imaginable: marbled pinks and greens, iridescent silvers, the velvety violet of deepspace. If he lay on his back and watched them for hours on end, he might spot the flicker when they looped.

No time for that though. He was here for a purpose, and it sure as hell weren't sightseeing.

“Where is she?”

The Collector pressed the small of his back to guide him on. His rings dug in through Yondu's shirt, hard and icy-cold.

This was a test, he reminded himself, muscle ticking under his jaw. All just one big test. The Collector was seeing how tight he could wind him before he snapped; how desperate he was to save Kraglin. All Yondu had to do? Not rise to the bait.

As usual, that was easier said than done.

Before long – not ten seconds of walking, in fact – they arrived outside a crumbling bivouac. Common sense told Yondu that if he turned he'd be able to see the exit. It was kinda unnerving, when he realized he was wrong.

The Collector noted his glance over his shoulder, the bloodless pinch of his mouth.

“An illusion of depth, Udonta. The hologram expands once you enter. The room is only fifty square feet, but I spared few expenses in making it habitable. Elyzk is an old friend, after all.”

“'Friend',” Yondu echoed. He squinted at the shelter. Seven branches propped against the trunk at an acute angle, woven together with flax. “She don't exactly live in luxury.”

The Collector shrugged. “She doesn't want it. Money isn't everything to everybody, Udonta.”

Like he'd know, mister hoity-toity _master of my own mining corporation who can afford to have rare species shipped to my menagerie from all of the galaxy's ninety-six corners._ Dodging the guiding hand, Yondu stomped past him.

“Oi, madam! Ya got visitors!”

The woman who crawled from the hut wasn't the nubile filly Yondu had feared. For a start, she was old. Not _old-_ old – no more than twenty years his senior, though it was hard to tell under all that fur. Her hair shone ebony, several shades darker than Kraglin's own. The skin beneath it was swarthy to match.

The Collector inclined his head. “Elzyk,” he said.

Elzyk nodded. She dressed simply: a wraparound skirt and no top. The fluff on her chest made for a skimpy modesty covering, but she flaunted her sagging tits with the ease of a woman who'd never worn anything but skin.

It weren't them that caught Yondu's attention. He knew she'd look similar to Kraglin – and she did. But she walked on two legs, not four. Her arms were of a length that indicated they might aid in sprinting, and her legs had a kink in them like the hind limbs of a dog: foot grotesquely extended, a talon poking through the flesh around the heel. But she seemed comfortable enough as she padded forwards, opening her arms in gibbonish welcome.

“Oh, Tivvan! You brought a companion. Greetings, newcomer. It is rare for me to entertain visitors.”

Her smile contained a lot of teeth. Too many, in Yondu's opinion. Maybe Centaurians were actually a delicacy to A-Chiltarians, and the Collector lured him here for lunch?

Elzyk chuckled, dry as snapping twigs. “Don't worry boy. He keeps me well fed.”

She nodded to her bivouac, where offal lay diced on a board, juices dripping, staining the wood cherry-dark. Huh. Seemed the taste for raw meat was a species-thing. Suddenly Kraglin's reactions to his home-cooking made a lot more sense.

Elzyk made the most of his distraction. She darted forwards - fast for an old biddy - and hooked under Yondu's chin. She tipped his head back, into the light. Yondu let her. He measured his breaths, hyper-aware of his jugular where it throbbed an inch from her claw.

No chance of him fighting his way out, should this go south. Couldn't even draw his arrow and shove it through her eye socket, not before she slit his throat.

Stickiness tipped her fingers. Fresh blood, still warm. Yondu refused to look away. Her eyes reflected his face a hundred times over.

“Hi,” he said.

Her nostrils flared, sucking the surrounding whiskers briefly towards them. Then, with a curt nod, she let him go.

“He drips with male pheromones. They cling to him like butterflies to honey.”

Yondu blinked. “That's sure poetic.”

Tell him Kraglin weren't gonna start spouting soliloquies. The new hairdo and the teeth, those he could just about stomach; but sweet mushy nothings were another matter. The Collector laid a hand on Elzyk's shoulder.

“Some things are due to nurture, rather than nature. Elzyk here lived her first decade in a colony before the mass extinction."

Elzyk's tongue darted out. She licked each eyeball, fast as a frog catching flies. “I believe you mean 'the mass genocide', old friend.”

“Yes, yes; that. She learned the ways of her people, unlike Kraglin who never had the chance.”

“Forced from his parents too young,” Elzyk agreed. Her gnarled hands couldn't form fists – her talons were too long for that. But they flexed, clawing the air for all of a second, before she forced the tension down. “Inhabiting a body not-his-own. _Crushing_ down his rut, unable to indulge his needs because his new race might see him as _uncivilized. M_ _onstrous..._ ”

Yondu shrugged. “Can kinda see why, if y'all go loco and eat folks when yer horny.”

“ _No_.”

The sudden volume surprised him. Didn't make him jump, of course. Oh no – he was Yondu Udonta; jumping weren't in his repertoire. Just stubbed his toe on a holographic rock; that was all.

“That is _not_ a normal reaction!" Elzyk's snarl crept up her cheeks. “That is the result of repression, decades of it! And confusion, and the _anger_ of a creature forced to deny itself far too long!” Her scowl sunk; her long ears twitched. “Oh, the poor boy. Without training, without the compassion of his own kind, without an _outlet..._ He will be just as confused and terrified as you are, once this has passed."

"I ain't  _terrified..._ "

Elzyk bent towards him, copper crusting her whiskers. "Listen here, boy. He needs help. He needs his people. You must bring him to me.”

Shit.

Yondu scanned the tree-line. The door had to be out there  _somewhere,_  even if he couldn't see it _._ Unfortunately, while he was sure he could outrun the Collector, Elzyk was another matter.

“I said I ain't sellin' him. You might not mind livin' in a cage, but Kraglin ain't like you. He's a Ravager. He belongs up there with the stars. Swindlin' folks and shootin' 'em and all that other fun shit.”

Not here, not in the Collector's gallery. Not on a quiet little asteroid either, tumbling through the uncharted space at Galaxy's Edge - not that it did Yondu any use to realize it now.

Elzyk huffed. “Fool. I do not wish to _keep_ the boy. I wish to _help_ him. But I cannot do that until you pull him from the rut.”

Yondu thinned his eyes. “So Kraglin goes free?” 

He hardly dared believe it - though he trusted Elzyk more than the Collector, if only because she didn't wear that sinister brooding smirk, like she was watching a plan weave together in real-time. But it was Tivvan who spoke, clapping his manicured hands.

"Kraglin goes free. I will tell you my price once you have heard your own side of the deal.” His shadow smothered Yondu as he bent to hiss into his ear: “Careful, Udonta. You may not like what she has to say.”

His breath smelt ice-cold, a spruce of mint and underlying tannin. Yondu ignored him. He turned to Elzyk, jaw a solid box.

“If it'll get him back, I'm up for it. Say yer piece, woman – I ain’t leavin' him like that a minute longer than I gotta.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Half a chapter, because I'm running out of spooooons. I love every comment, but sorry if it takes me a while to reply! I'm rather low-energy at the moment.**


	10. I Keep My Heart and Soul in the Boondocks

Ten minutes later, Yondu opened the door - unlocked, just like Tivvan promised - and walked back into the main chamber on ankles that resolutely refused to wobble.

“I'll do it,” was all he said. Then, as the Collector pushed the vial – stoppered with a fancy-looking cork and dusty with age – across the desk: “So shoot, Whitey. What're these terms you keep yakkin' bout? Kraglin's off the table – what else d'you want?”

The Collector examined him, nails tap-tapping on the little glass jar. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, index to pinky and back again.

“You do not deal in children,” he said eventually.

Yondu's hackles raised like someone had jabbed him with a fully-charged moomba prod. “No,” he snarled. “I don't.”

_Not anymore._

The Collector rolled the vial back and forth. Light twizzled through the prism, rainbows shattering over the desk, the cages, the faraway ceiling.

“How about unborn ones? A gray area of the Code, no?”

Codes didn't have gray areas. That was kinda the point. Yondu leaned forwards. “The hell you talkin' 'bout.”

“I'm talking about procreation. Sperm, meet egg.” At Yondu's sneer Tivvan produced another vial, empty but identical to the first. “You see, I think of myself as something of a conservationist. I didn't just freeze Elzyk's pheromones in the cryogenic chamber. I also took care to extract a batch of eggs. She is old, Udonta. A-Chiltarians have a shorter lifespan than most – I'd wager there's another decade in her, maximum. I must create a replacement sooner rather than later. If you won't allow me to take your... what is he to you again?”

“Mate,” said Yondu, still frowning as he muddled through the last part of that speech.

“Mate,” the Collector agreed. “I must look to other sources. So, here is my deal to you. You use the musk. Have him ejaculate inside you – stop pulling faces, you are not a child. Swab a sample, put it into this test tube, and have it beamed back to me via this.”

He pulled out a matter transmitter: a fold-out Colosseum, three tyre-like rings elevated one atop the other by dinky support struts. Lights blinked around the rim, and Yondu knew that when it was activated, it would disassemble particles from one point and reassemble them in another. The glow lit the Collector from beneath, highlighting his hawkish nose, his haughty brows, the cruel bloodless twist of his smile.

“Then I will give you the final key to returning your... _mate_ to you.”

“The final key? Ya mean there's more?”

“Oh, you'll find that out in good time. For now, think of this as insurance – a guarantee that your conscience won't get the better of you.”

Yondu dropped his hand over the Collector's own. He wheedled the vial out from under it, Tivvan recoiling from the scrape of dirty nails. “M'told I don't got one of them.”

“And yet,” the Collector said, tucking the second ampule into his hand besides the first, “here you are. Willing to submit to such an indignity if it will only return the mind of your precious _mate_.”

Yondu refused to feel self-conscious. He shrugged. Glass chinked, grating as he gave the phials a delicate squeeze. “Ain't a cap'n no more. I can do whatever the hell I want. Ain't bound to none but them I wanna be.”

“Indeed.” The Collector winked, slow as the cloud of breath that misted the tank behind him. “I expect to have the samples within a day of your return, Udonta. I wouldn't advise that you wait any longer, although I daresay you'll figure out the urgency soon enough.”

“Why?” Yondu squinted at him. “He ain't gonna try and eat me again, is he?”

“Not when you smell like a fertile female in heat, no. But if I were you, Udonta, I would dedicate some serious time to limbering up beforehand.” The Collector didn't once glance below his belt, though his smirk said all it needed to. “Stretching things out, if you know what I mean. Remember what Elzyk advised...”

Yondu scowled. “Don't need ya to tell me how to nookie.”

“Indeed, you do not. Just take my word for it, and do not forget the sample.”

He sat back, draped over his chair. His ruff covered the backrest and spilled over the sides, like a cat cushioned on its own fur.

“I will await your delivery, Mr Udonta, with the utmost anticipation.”

Yondu nodded and stalked to the door. He refused to acknowledge the lead lining in his belly, that creeping mildew-rot of guilt.

He needed Kraglin back. That was the crux of the matter. The Collector set his price, and Yondu had accepted it.

It wasn't _really_ dealing in kids. Yondu meant what he swore as he tore apart the cot set up at the end of his bed, where each of the brats did their stint for the journey to Ego's planet. As he crushed the toys he bought them under his bare feet, crunching glass and plastic, too numb to feel the cuts.

_Never again._

 

* * *

 

 

It was a quiet trip back to the asteroid. Yondu spent most of it in the cabin, alone.

Or at least, he _tried_ to be alone, because it was difficult to brood over the enormity of what he'd gotten involved in when there was a giggling tree being chased from bunk to bunk by a frothy-mouthed raccoon.

That frothy-mouthed raccoon wasn't _really_ angry. Yondu and Groot understood this without needing to be told. The others were getting better at it. Even Peter seemed to realize that just because Rocket _claimed_ he was gonna rip out Groot's non-existent gizzards, he didn't actually mean it.

Groot hid behind Yondu, squealing like a stuck Orloni. Yondu shuffled to the side.

“Now Twig, ya got yerself into this. Don't go expectin' me to getcha out of it.”

Groot turned betrayed eyes on him, huge and glassy-wet. Flarkin' diva. The most grievous injury he sustained was the bump of his head when Rocket dived him down – gently, gently; catching the his weight on his knees – and put his clever fingers to use, wriggling up and down Groot's sides until he dissolved in a puddle of bark and laughter.

Quill leaned against the doorway. _Seem familiar? s_ aid his posture and the tilt of his head.

His smile was soft as the plush cotton shirts he favored, the ones Yondu stole because it gave Quill an excuse to talk to him when he wanted them back.

Kid seemed to need those. He and Yondu were still working it out, this messy cat's cradle of thoughts and feelings and stars-blasted _sentiment_ that bound them together. Yondu still struggled not to turn navy when he remembered those words, uttered under the light of a dying planet, while he stared at Peter like he wanted him to be the last thing he saw.

_He may have been your father, boy. But he weren't your daddy._

There was just no _going back_ from something like that. Sure enough, in the aftermath, as Yondu lay on the hypoallergenic pallet, sopping from the bacta-tank and reeking of hospitals and medication – two of Peter's least favorite things – the boy had curled on the chair beside him, bowing over Yondu without touching. He'd been too delicate for that, skin cracking and bleeding at the slightest brush.

That was the problem with bacta tanks. They healed you up alright, but soak in their turquoise goop for more than a day – like Yondu had, his lungs more scar than healthy tissue – and your body turned to mallow. Back then, Yondu'd been soft as the bloaty corpses they used to dredge from the _Eclector_ watertanks, after a rowdy night in dock. The bedsheets had been a bright blaze. The pain blared loud as Quill's mutter of _no take-backsies,_ his whispered, choking _dad._ The two blurred together: the agony of survival and the fear that, now Yondu had said what always remained unspoken, he had to live up to his words.

He was a father.

He always had been, but he didn't get much of a childhood, and he sure didn't know how to provide one. Treating the kid like any other rookie was so much _less stress_ than trying to learn the difference between parenting and abuse.

Nowadays, Yondu didn't have that excuse.

He and Quill had their moments, of course. Like that time the crew left to fuck hookers and glut themselves on liquor at the nearest dive port, when Quill had been grounded for some prank or another, and Yondu grouchily gave up on partying to make sure the brat didn't skive. He chased a screeching Terran through red-lit corridors – not screeching from pain, or fear, or even anger, but _laughter,_ much like Groot was squeaking and jiggling his little legs now. After herding Quill to his quarters, he bundled him on the scratchy synth-fur that lined his bed and tickled him until he damn near pissed, threatening all the while.

 _Remember?_  asked Peter's eyebrows. Course Yondu did.

Rocket snapped - “Don't jus' stand there, help me hold him down!” He blew a fat raspberry on Groot's belly.

It was good to know that a few kids in this Galaxy got a decent start in life. But would Kraglin and Elzyk's brat be so lucky?

Peter strolled into the bunk room. He stepped over Yondu's bedroll and his pile of pilfered clothing, and perched on the bed, heavy enough to spill all three of them in his direction.

"Give us a minute?"

Rocket looked between them. “You good with that, Blue?”

Yondu nodded. He couldn't tell Rat. Not for the sheer embarrassment factor – although he'd rather not admit that his plan involved smearing his pussy in pheromones and letting Kraglin wear himself out.

Rat knew all about the shitty decisions in his past, and he still stood by him. But the important thing about redemption was that you _tried_ to do better.

Hell though. This weren't all doom and gloom - the Collector had given him the perfect opportunity to case his freaky zoo. They could steal the brat back again, soon as Kraglin was right in the head. No one else'd be any the wiser.

Rocket lingered until certain he wasn't getting a confession. He scooped Groot onto his shoulder and stomped off, muttering nonsense about batteries. He shut the door behind him.

Yondu touched his pants pocket. There were the vials - exactly were where he'd left them. When he turned to Peter, he found him studying his boots with rare concentration.

“What, already boy? Out with it.”

“You made a deal, didn't you?”

No point denying it. Yondu nodded.

“You bartered something stupid.”

Yondu nodded again. Peter rounded on him, grabbing his shoulders, palms sweating through the shirt.

“Tell me! I can help, we can work something else out. Together, Yondu.”

Yondu curated his next words carefully.

“Collector built in a failsafe. Don't know what it is yet, but if I don't do what he wants, Kraglin ain't gettin' better.”

“That _bastard._ We'll all go back there, squeeze him, break his cages...”

“While Kraglin's runnin' around an' findin' himself in stars-know what trouble?” Yondu shook his head. “What if he runs into a bilgesnipe?”

“From what you've told me,” said Peter snidely, “he'd probably eat it. Look, Yondu. Just. If there's anything I can do to help, tell me. I want to help you – I _need_ to. You and Kraglin both. Y'know what you mean to me...”

Yondu grimaced. He punched him in the ribs, lightly only by his standards. “Don'tchu say it.”

“Leaving it unsaid doesn't make it any less true. Let me help you, Yondu.”

Yondu opened his mouth to deliver a resolute fuck off, bolstered by a barrage of insults that would collapse Quill's earnest expression and send him scurrying with his tail between his legs. Then he shut it again.

“Well,” he said, after a long pause. “There is one thing.”

It wouldn't be fun for either of them, but at the end of the day, Yondu couldn't deny that he trusted the brat more than anyone else in the galaxy, bar the beast prowling through the forest-strewn kloofs of his retirement asteroid.

Plus, it weren't like Quill never walked in on them as a kid. His mind had been doused in so much bleach that a little more couldn't hurt. Yondu looked up at him, forcing a grin.

“If ya got the stomach for it, that is.”

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit,” said Peter.

“Yeah,” said Yondu. They sat for a moment in silence. Then:

“Holy _shit._ ”

“I _know._ ”

 

* * *

 

They gave Yondu his privacy, the day before the drop. That was a small mercy.

Not that he thought Quill would spill any gory details – kid couldn't look at Yondu for five seconds without turning neon. But it ensured no one walked into the bunk room as the chronometer swirled in an endless riptide, piling on the seconds towards that moment when the hatch would open, Yondu would jump out, and the  _Milano_ would retreat to a safe distance and (Yondu prayed) activate the 'opaque' function on their windscreen.

He would be armed with an ear-comm and his wits. Right now his arrow was a mighty pretty accessory, and not much else. Having it on him might make Yondu feel a bit better though – much like the pants he fastened, after taking a long and thorough bathroom break.

He considered the fly a moment before unzipping them again, and sliding them to pool around his knees.

Best get this over with.

 _Prepare yourself well,_ Elzyk suggested.  _Every hole. He won't think of doing it for you, and if you need respite from one he'll take the other._

Quill had awkwardly presented a lube pot – and fled before Yondu could tease him. He uncorked it now, lid squeaking over the plastic screw grain, and peeled back the sterile seal.

It smelt weird. Fruitier than he was used to. Yondu would assume it belonged to Quill's dame, if he didn't know the boy had a fondness for floral shampoo-powder. But he was trying to turn himself on, not off – which meant putting a resolute cap on all thoughts of his boy and his weird Terran mating rituals.

Yondu waddled to the bed, as majestic as any man in sagging pants. He sat with a grunt and a creak of memory foam. He dunked his fingers, three at once, and introduced the smear to his slit without bothering to warm it, other hand pinning his soft cock to his belly.

He soon encountered problem #1. His fingers wouldn't go in. Not a single one.

Okay, he  _knew_ everything was a bit more crammed together back there than it was for most cunt-sporting species, but this was frankly ridiculous.

Yondu scowled. He traced impatiently over his lips, then poked between them to see if he'd softened.

No dice.

Dammit. Yondu was too fucking old for this. He couldn't just loosen up and start dripping on command, slicken with a thought like he used to back in the good old days when those stupid Biological Imperatives buzzed on overdrive and he got wet and wanting whenever Kraglin looked his way.

Or any person-with-a-pecker, for that matter. That might've been fun at parties, but it made his new captaincy mighty miserable. He hated it at the time: doubled-down on everyone around him, fucked Kraglin rough in his desperation to deny everything his body desired, until one day he couldn't bear it anymore, crawling on the idjit's lap and telling him precisely where he needed him, arrow poised to stab the moment Kraglin laughed.

Kraglin hadn't. Just stroked up and down his inner thighs, knuckling gentle at his slit, slipping inside him so sweet and slow that Yondu tipped over a tiny edge right there and then, clutching Kraglin's bird-thin shoulders and hissing smelly air between his teeth.

Now, more decades down the line than Yondu cared to admit, he found himself missing that constant tickle of arousal in his netherbits.

One look at Elzyk, with her wiry muscle and steel-sharp claws, told him that A Chiltarian carrier-types were built significantly sturdier than himself. And Kraglin had a healing factor to boot! (He'd forgotten to ask the Collector about that. Most likely, it had something to do with the transformation; Kraglin must've gobbled a whole flarkin' boar just to keep up with his metabolic rate.)

But the point was this: Yondu was neither as tough nor as durable as Kraglin's kind. If Kraglin wasn't going to prep him, would he listen to 'slow down'? Doubtful. What if he dug his talons into Yondu's back to keep him pinned? What if they sunk too deep and severed something vital?

Would Kraglin even stop?

“C'mon,” Yondu hissed, shutting his eyes. He rolled his lower lip between his teeth, dragging off the flaky chaps until he tasted copper: little florets of it, bitter on the tip of his tongue. “You ain't gettin' nowhere like this, idjit.”

Patience had never been his forte. He wanted this over with and there was an easy way to go about it, so he stabbed the second finger in beside the first, sparing a wince for the sting.

The lube tingled, like someone was stroking his cunt with a feather. It would be delicious if Yondu weren't too busy cussing to pay it attention. What was he thinking? Internal tears were the last thing he needed. 

Kraglin'd give him plenty of those on his own.

Yondu clamped down. He couldn't force in any further, not without doing damage. His cunt didn't plump all hot and heavy like it should do before a fuck. The lips that pressed on his palm were cold and crinkled, decidedly unsexy, dry as the salt-giants that orbited Reigel.

“Quit bein' a fuckin' baby,” he hissed, even as he pushed at the fingers like he wanted them out. “You can do this.”

He needed to clear his head. Needed to quit thinking of what was waiting for him as the predator that had stalked him through the woods, and start seeing it as... Kraglin.

Another guise, another face, another personality. But still Kraglin Obfonteri, all nervous eyes and fidgety fingers and shoulder blades that occasionally stabbed Yondu in the night.

He was all of that and more. And sure, right now  _Kraglin_ was buried under the snarling and the biting and the slash of clawed paws, and...

Yondu felt himself shiver from the inside. No. He had to be loose, he had to be wet and open and inviting as a pussy that was built to be bred. If Kraglin wasn't fooled by Elzyk's musk, Yondu became lunch.

And therein lay the problem.

Yondu didn't scare easy. He sure as hell didn't admit it. But as he lay in that mushroom-bower, Kraglin's muzzle parting the ferns, completely convinced that this was how he died, he might've been. Y'know. A little jumpy.

Yondu couldn't forget it. No matter how much he tried. He couldn't forget the thump of his heart in his throat, the cheesy stench of his sweat.

He tried to squash it down. He filled his head with sensual vidclips, drawn from imagination and memory ailke. Kraglin opening him on his fingers, sultry-slow. Kraglin licking up his cock, claws tracing tender ley-lines between the muscle and chunk on Yondu's thighs.

But they kept warping, kept mutating. Each time Kraglin's lips crested his neck, they were followed by teeth.

Yondu shuddered. Not  _shivered,_ because that would be a sign of weakness, but  _shuddered:_ a muscle spasm that made his legs jerk. He clutched around his fingers, tight enough to hurt.

Dammit. He had to relax, had to calm down, had to stop imagining what it would feel like as Kraglin chomped down, snapping his vertebrae like the spicy crickle-crackers they served at the Knowhere bazaars...

Yondu fell back on the bed. He shut his eyes, briefly curling his knees to his chest.

Lube varnished his crotch, shiny and thick. It cooled as the vents cycled oxygen from one room to the next.

Yondu rubbed his knuckles on his closed eyelids. Then he stretched so his legs stuck out over the mattress, pants hobbling his ankles.

This time, he didn't picture the beast. He and Kraglin had spent so long in each other's company, moving and fighting and fucking as one entity, pillaging cruise ships and looting abandoned stations, steering their M-ship out past Galaxy's Edge to retrieve one little Terran from the Silver Spiral next door. Why? Because something always reeled them back, no matter how far they strayed. It was that which Yondu latched onto, thread spooling into the recesses of his mind.

He thought of him and Kraglin, knife flashing and pistol blaring and arrow dancing wild and free, cap'n and mate felling enemies side by side. Of how Kraglin found out about the list of names Yondu mumbled to himself every night before sleep and murmured  _I know it's yer business sir, an' I ain't tryin' to pry or nothing, but per'aps you'd let me help...?_

So Kraglin hunted them for him, squeezing old contacts and delving into the black market's armour-plated underbelly. Old rich war criminals didn't give up their coordinates easily. But Kraglin had his ways, and – more importantly – his knives.

He lurked in shadows while Yondu slaughtered them, one Kree noble after another.

Over the years, Yondu's list whittled from a hundred names to fifty to twenty to ten, an ever-reducing memory game. Kraglin knew them so well that he could prompt him whenever Yondu let one slip.

Kraglin never offered to perform the actual butchery himself. The one time a panicked Kree found his bolt hole before Yondu's arrow found his aorta, Kraglin watched him run through the scope of his blaster, finger outside the trigger guard but clenching on air.

“Next time,” was all he said, slinking back to Yondu. Next time it was.

Thinking about it, despite the general knobbliness of his frame, there  _had_ always been something sleek about him when he killed. Like the predator crept out whenever it smelled blood.

Yondu kneaded his way up his thighs. This time, he met warm slick.

His scent settled thick in Yondu's throat. His mind narrated each slow rub, the faint scratch where his nails bumped his cock. His balls split along his slit, heavy and velveteen-soft, the left testicle slightly fatter than the right. They swelled as the arousal built. His hole loosened and a push from low in his belly opened him, and -

 _Oh._ There. That was it. Yondu eased two fingers in to the root.

 _Kraglin,_ he thought.

His dick rose, slow but indomitable. When he bucked it slapped back against his pouch, wetness tacking to smooth blue skin.

Thin limbs, scratchy hair. Big blue eyes, watery even when Kraglin was smiling. The way he touched Yondu over the years: tentative at first, then reverent, then hungry and fond and so fucking  _affectionate_ it made Yondu want to puke, just a little.

The fingers dipping into and out of Yondu's puss were, for a split second, long and pale. They crooked on the in-thrust, hooking his frontal wall and grinding there.

Yondu spread himself further, arching into the curl. The pants strained between his shins so Yondu rolled onto his side instead, fucking his hips against the sheet.

He'd change 'em after; this was no way to repay Peter for his hospitality. But the shuddery need was building, and he couldn't care about the what-came-next, not in the here-and-now. He raised one leg to finger himself from behind.

He dug into the spongey patch, careful to use the pads of his fingers, not the nail. He could feel himself getting wetter, hear the squelch becoming louder.

He wasn't looking to cum – just... How was it the Collector put it?  _Limber up._

But this was still  _nice._ Not electrifying. More warm and sleepy and delicious, as he kneaded himself soft as dough.

If Yondu strained, he could fit all four digits in together. It tugged on his wrist, sharp and sore – he had to roll onto his stomach, the buckle of his dropped pants catching on the sheet. But they were in. He fucked them there a little bit, getting used to the stretch and swell of it.

Kraglin couldn't be any bigger than that. Surely not.

Withdrawing his sloppy fingers, Yondu half-knelt, stifling any incidental noises in the pillow. He introduced them one after the other to his ass.

Elzyk had said  _all_ his holes. And well, he  _did_ promise Kraglin, back when he flew the arrow and Yondu told him he could fuck his back-door rather than the front...

No. Not  _his_ arrow. Kraglin's.

It'd be Kraglin's again, once this was over. Yondu remembered how the crest smacked the earth, yaka chunks ranging from garnet-red to pigeon-blood pink to the brilliant crimson of Kraglin's eyes. Snarls of  _run._ The scream of claws over metal...

_Don't think about that._

Yondu grunted, bearing down. Shallow and slow, that was the way to go: fingertips plunging in and out, toying with the flexible rim. Yondu applied more lube, stretching his stinging wrist as was needed.

Had to be ready for Kraglin. That was his only thought here, his only purpose. To make himself as willing as he could, body and mind. Stars-knew the last thing he needed was to associate Kraglin with shit from his past. Or worse: for Kraglin to remember every last detail, and cringe and stammer shamefacedly and  _apologize_ until they were both in his graves, because he thought he'd  _raped_ him or something stupid like that.

No, Yondu thought firmly. He scissored until air hit inside him, melting him low on the bed. No one was forcing him to do shit. The rut wouldn't  _kill_ Kraglin, if left unattended. Technically, Yondu could leave the hormonal blazes to run their course: find another asteroid to kick his feet up on while he waited for Kraglin's comm-call. It might be a Lunar. It might be a year. But, as Elzyk had assured him as Yondu knelt in her crappy hut and declined her offers of de-boned Orloni, Kraglin was still in there.

While waiting was an option, Yondu would rather draw him out of this mental state  _before_  he tried to do something stupid like fight an entire colony of skranks or mount a bilgesnipe. And in order for that to happen, he needed the Collector's vials: one to empty, one to fill.

He crawled forwards, his hands sliding over the sheets, knees skidding on drizzled lube. The first vial lay on the pillow. It looked so delicate: a hollow glass twist cradled against gardeners' calluses, sticky with lube. Liquid swirled around the crystal chamber, steam curling under the stopper.

Was he supposed to use it all at once? How long would the dose last? Would the friction of the fuck deplete it?

Half, Yondu decided, cracking the seal. If Kraglin got too chewy for his liking, he'd apply the rest.

The vapor dispersed, a thin fading ribbon. Yondu smelt something he couldn't place, which he might've likened to cloves and capers if he knew what either of those things were. Sharp and pickled, just a touch salty.

“This better not give me no yeast infection,” he muttered, tipping the vial back and forth. It was more like water than glue: he'd have to be careful not to waste any. Flopping onto his back he spread his legs, pants dangling from one heel. He craned over his chest and belly, steered the solid throb of his dick to one side and pinned it while he parted his vulva, inner folds glistening, slick and tender and ready for whatever Kraglin gave.

He checked his chronometer. Five minutes to the drop.

He poured.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Quill for what felt like the thousandth time, but was probably only the hundred-and-thirty-first. “Yondu, if there's any other -”

Yondu moved to stand by the portal, watching the asteroid approach. Treetops intersected in every shade of green, splodges on a viridescent paint-palette, too far away for him to make out the individual leaves.

The asteroid was hollow on one side. The crater devoured a quarter of its mass, precipitous plummets flattening into cave-speckled plateaus. The caves formed along fissure points of a centuries-old collision, and while its gravity synthesizers were state-of-the-art, you sometimes heard crevasses grinding open in the night as the asteroid did its utmost to succumb to its old wound and disintegrate, sending a stream of rocks falling into the weedy dwarf-star.

“Ya remember what I told ya?”

Quill pulled a face. “Kinda hard to forget. All I gotta do is. Um. Fetch you the empty vial, collect it when it's full, and take it to the matter transporter. Then bring whatever's there to you. Right?”

Yondu nodded. That was it, in a nutshell. But there was one detail Peter had forgotten - “And?”

“And try not to get myself dead.”

Yondu twisted to grin over his shoulder, resisting the urge to pull his pants away from his sticky crotch. He could smell the musk on him – so could his companions, by the way Rocket's nose puckered back into his face. “Atta boy.”

“Shaddup,” said Rocket. He span the biosig-scannar around to face them before Yondu could bristle. A large yellow dot stalked across the screen, prowling through the jungle below. “Looks like we found your boy, Blue. He's giving off a lot of heat – it's either an A-Chilli-tarian or a bilgesnipe.”

“You can't narrow it down any further?” Gamora asked. Rocket shrugged.

“Don't got no A-Chilli-whatsits on spec. It's heat output or nothing.”

They dived into the crater's heart. Yondu scanned the trees. They stretched up around them, sprawling for miles towards the top of the basin: a jet black horizon that ended in deepspace.

If he stood with his legs pressed together, the lube dribbled down the insides of his thighs. If he stood at-ease, it puddled on the gusset of his pants, which was impossibly less comfortable.

“This ain't near my hut,” he observed. Rocket wriggled his whiskers, tip-tapping away at his scanner.

“Near enough. Bug-boy will've prowled a bit further afield by now, as he ain't found nothing fuckable nearby.”

“Rocket,” Mantis scolded, hands tucked into her armpits so she couldn't be tempted to pet him. “That is insensitive.”

Yondu turned his glare on Quill, who raised his hands and looked as innocent as a guilty shitstain could. “Dude, it's a small ship. We don't keep secrets.” Yondu's glare  intensified. Quill slumped. “Hey, it was a lot to deal with, okay. I needed a drink.” Gamora coughed. “ _Five_ drinks. And y'know how I get when I -” Yondu crossed his arms. “Dude. I'm sorry, okay. I should've kept my mouth shut -”

“Indeed,” Drax agreed. He stepped into the crowded hold, his beefy body making the remaining space shrink like it was being sucked out through an interdimensional plughole. “I would prefer not to picture Kraglin putting his penis in Yondu.” Then, at the unanimous cringe - “What? I do not like to imagine either of our Ravager companions mid-coitus. Their genitalia is most likely incompatible with my interests, and while I do not condemn their sexual practice, I would, on a personal level, find it distasteful to watch.”

He paused, as if deciding how best to horrify them next.

“Especially since Kraglin has transformed into some manner of beast. His penis may well have taken on animalistic characteristics, such as barbs or a knot – I imagine it will be rather painful to have it inserted into the anus.”

“We,” said Rocket, breathless from his dive to cover Groot's earholes, “were all doin' our best  _not_ to think about that.”

Yondu decided now was not the time to mention the fun extra equipment in his pants. “Alright,” he growled. “Playtime's over. Drop me here, Rat.”

Quill still looked concerned. “You know we're right behind you, yeah?” Then, at Drax's mimed puking noises - “Not  _literally_. Ugh. But Yondu – you activate that earpiece, we'll hear you. We'll come grab you -”

“You will,” Rocket corrected, shuddering. But then, before Gamora could protest that they were all a team  _-_ “Quill's got a point though, Blue. You need help, you got it. Don't go thinkin' you're alone down there, yeah?”

Yondu rolled his eyes. The best way to hide embarrassment – which he was possibly,  _just possibly,_ feeling a lick of after Drax's unwanted segue into the intricacies of his and Kraglin's sex-life – was to own your weaknesses. He leaned against the porthole, glass a chilly blaze against his scarred-up back.

“Ya think I can't take this, or somethin'? Kid, me and Kraggles've been playin' this game for longer than you was  _alive._ ”

“Gross,” said Rocket on automatic, but he seemed a little impressed. “Seriously? Quill here's barely managed a steady year with Gamora” -

“Uncalled for,” Quill grumbled. Gamora laid a placating hand on his arm.

“Accurate, though.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

\- “and I still catch him starin' at chicks' boobs.”

That hand was swiftly removed. Peter turned to Rocket with his palms out as if to say 'what the hell, dude', then decided it was Gamora who needed his attentions, and immediately switched from frustrated to fawning.

“Look but don't touch, right? You know that I'd never... y'know, boink any of them. Unless you wanted to watch. Or – or join in – hey, come back! Where are you” -

Rocket sniggered. Groot blinked, Drax shook his head, and Mantis looked deeply concerned as Gamora strutted for the cockpit, haughty and lithe as a viper.

Meanwhile, Yondu made the most of the distraction. He popped the seal on the airlock, the half-empty vial clasped in one sweaty blue hand.

“Later,” he said, two fingers to his temple in a mock salute. Then he jumped.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Here's the rest of the chapter! Thank you for all your comments. I cherish them all. I will get to them as soon as I have energy! <3 You're a wonderful, supportive bunch of lovelies, and you brighten my days.**


	11. That Muddy Water Running Through My Veins

They were still above the canopy line. Yondu crashed into the branches, swaying the trunk with his weight.

It was a long way to fall, but Yondu had no intention of letting go. While it had been covered by no more than a single module during battle training, Centaurians were built to climb.

He latched onto the bough instinctively, grimacing as his groin slid over the slippery lining of his pants. Then, biceps bunching, he heaved himself along.

The forest was quiet. Too quiet. The breeze rustled the leaves, but beyond that there was no sound, no movement. Like the trees were holding their breaths.

Or their photosynthy-whassit. Yondu had been too busy learning battle formations to master biology.

Something was down there alright. So he thought to himself, watching the distant flurry of glider-lemurs, who were abandoning their native trunks as fast as the stretched skin of their pseudo-wings could carry them. He was willing to place bets on it being Kraglin.

The only problem with taking a gamble however, was that sometimes you lost.

Yondu picked his way down the tree. He swung off the lowest branch and dropped to a crouch, body on high alert. He was expecting to be tackled from behind, in front or above, by a randy ball of blue fur.

He wasn’t expecting the crackling rumble of a growl, too low for lungs of Kraglin’s size, and the blast of meat-hot air that splattered against his bare back.

Kraglin or a bilgesnipe, Rocket said.

Yondu groaned. “Aw shit.”

Really, there wasn’t much more to say.

 

* * *

 

 

Yondu sprang forwards, throwing himself onto his hands. He managed to avoid landing palm-down on a thistle – last thing he needed was the smell of his blood overpowering Elzyk's pussy juice (and thinking about that juice in _his_ pussy was all kinds of cringey. By the stars, did he hope the Collector had screened her for STIs.)

The bilgesnipe's claws scythed an inch over his head.

Good thing he gave the prosthetic to Kraglin, otherwise he'd be hooked. Yondu rolled, flinging his body into the bracken, no care for coordination.

Adrenaline hit harder than a huffer shot. It punched the air from his lungs and made his vision wobble to a haze. It took a second for Yondu to wrestle himself under control, isolate the instinctual fear response, crush it resolutely under a mental bootcap.

He wasn't wearing those now. The leaf litter scraped his soles as he scrabbled forwards on hands and knees, not daring to look back.

There was no point anyway. He'd just be wasting time. He knew what he'd see: the long Jurassic body rippling with spines, the horn-bedecked head, the tusks dripping with that venom and the anvil-shaped bludgeon of a tail...

He whistled when the claw stabbed through his loose pant leg, scraping backwards fast enough to drag his knees from under him.

It did fuck all. Certainly didn't make him feel any more hopeful about his prospects for getting out of this alive. Unless -

“Quill!”

Calling for help was far from Yondu's list of favorite things to do. The only items that ranked worse were 'knowing that Stakar only forgives me because he thinks I'm dead' and 'talking about my feelings'. But sometimes, it was necessary.

His pantleg ripped; the claw retracted. That gave Yondu a second to scurry into the bush. He didn't get far – not far enough that the thicket wouldn't be parted by a simple sweep of the monster’s paws. He crammed himself small and slithered under a root, bearded lichen crumbling from the bark.

The bilgesnipe had rampaged down one of the few paths wide enough to fit its bulk. It obviously wasn't well-traveled. Vegetation filled the gap, splintered trunks fuzzy with moss and studded in bright orange oyster-caps, flower-laden creepers swinging in the breeze. The weeds were overgrown. No paw prints marred the soil, other than those left by the bilgesnipe as it pawed the ground like a Svartalf bull preparing to charge.

Was it standing a little lopsided, or was it Yondu's imagination? And was that blood, flecking its stripy mane?

What the hell could hurt a bilgesnipe? Or, for that matter, make it run for its life?

Yondu didn't get the chance to think it through. The bilgesnipe bellowed, blasting the leaves back like a thruster engine gunning on full.

Yondu froze. Every muscle cranked tight as if he'd been electrocuted.

 _You're dead,_ his mind informed him in a high, panicked voice that sounded nothing like his own. _You're dead, you're dead, you ain't got yer arrow and you're dead, you're-dead-you're-dead-you're -_

The bilgesnipe stood directly behind him. Even if Quill's ship burst through the canopy with all guns ablaze, they'd be as likely to mince Yondu as the beast. No chance of a solid shot – and anyway, they'd be too late.

Acid-spit sizzled when it hit the forest floor. The soft noise was the only sound, besides the huff of the bilgesnipe's breath, repetitive and rhythmic and stinking of its last kill.

Yondu wasn't one for shutting his eyes and praying for Anthos. If he was gonna go out, it would be while swinging. Sure, his opponent outmatched him in every field except mental gymnastics – although right now, actual ones would do him more use. If he could jump for a low hanging branch, if he could get enough momentum for a solid kick, he might be able to scale the tree.

Bilgesnipe could climb. They were all-terrain predators; if Asgardians struggled to hunt them, depowered Centaurians had no chance. But the rainforest thinned around this part of the asteroid, near where caves mottled the cliff like holes in a honeycomb.

The branches were of a waifish quality. They might be able to hold Yondu's weight, if he was very lucky and he sucked in, but an armor-plated animal with more mass than the average M-ship wouldn't have a prayer.

No time though. No point considering escape when it was impossible. Yondu might at the very least wheel around and take out an eye before the bilgesnipe ripped him open.

Yondu swallowed his last mouthful of stale spit, sucked his last lungful of air.

 _Bye Quill,_ he thought. _And Quill’s dumb friends._

He couldn't be bothered to list them all. But a couple deserved special mention in this, the endpapers of a long and chequered life.

_Greenie, you best look after my boy. Keep him outta mischief. And Rat, Twig's gonna need ya, so don't you go gettin' yerself dead. And Kraglin..._

He'd come so fucking close. Life weren’t fair. How could the universe let him get so close to curing his feral mate, elixir in hand (or in cunt; same difference), and then… what? Get eaten by a bilgesnipe, no chance to say goodbye?

Yondu curled his fingers into claws. At the very least, he would show Kraglin he went down fighting.

Before he could put his last plan into action, something smacked the bilgesnipe from the side. It kept going too, taking a chunk of the beast's thorax along for the ride.

Blood burst in a brackish green geyser. It gushed out with a force Yondu'd only seen from ruptured fuel tanks. The fringe of the spout caught Yondu, sprinkling his arm and side.

 _Thank fuck_ was his first thought, _gross_ his second.

 _How the hell's Kraglin supposed to smell me now_ came third, and with it a shiver, lodged in the base of his spine, as he registered the hunched, gore-dripping form that stood at the other end of the clearing, stooped half-in and half-out of a crouch.

Kraglin snorted, nostrils flaring and shutting like a seal. He slurped the last gristly string between his lips. The light was never the best on the forest floor, but it glanced off his teeth: sharp and irregular as icicles, a double-row of quivering needlepoints embedded in an over-long jaw.

Yondu didn't dare look away. It was the first time he'd seen him properly, face-on. Blue tufts sprouted from Kraglin's face, framing it in a furry rhomboid. The fuzz thinned over the rest of his body, sitting sleeker to his skin. Not as fine as Elyzk's, whose coat was streamlined as a running-dog, but it looked like it might be soft to the touch.

Kraglin stood on two legs rather than four – although he came close. He swung his head towards Yondu, nostrils honing on him more than his eyes, elongated knuckles brushing the earth.

He was still just as scrawny, Yondu saw, taking a step closer. That thing Quill rambled about – day-jar voo or whatever – settled on his brain in a blanket of smothering ash. His mind flashed to the _Warbird_ , to Kraglin wrenching out his prosthetic and hurling it aside, screaming _run_ while crimson ate the blue of his eyes.

Weren’t no blue to be seen, not anymore. Just red, divided into fifty equilateral hexagonal segments on each side.

Kraglin didn't speak. But after a long moment, his tongue slipped from his mouth, long and forked, navy as the rest of him. It circled each red eye, leaving the lenses shimmery with spit.

Yondu forced a smile. Then remembered that most species took tooth displays as threats, and stowed it again.

“Kraglin?”

Kraglin made a low snarl of acknowledgment. Or at least, Yondu hoped it was acknowledgment. Could just be. Y'know. Regular snarling.

He stepped forwards – more of a lope, really. A leggy, limber stride that made Yondu gut-twistingly aware of how useless it would be to run.

And so – he didn't. He stood his ground, watching Kraglin approach as he scented the air, parsing the reek of bilgesnipe-blood from whatever lay beneath.

Yondu refused to shut his eyes. He ground his teeth in an effort to stop himself shivering.

Kraglin's head tilted to one side, like that of a curious cat. His nostrils intermittently sucked and shrank. His eyes didn't move in their sockets, but Yondu could imagine what they saw – a hundred little Centaurians, clotted with a nimbus of contradicting scents.

Food. Bilgesnipe. Mate-in-need-of-a-breed.

The bilgesnipe sprawled out behind Yondu, wheezing its last. Cold sweat coated him, and he prayed that no cuts had opened as he crawled through the brush. Wouldn't do to confuse Kraglin. Not when he took another step, and another, stopping close enough to touch.

Yondu slowly raised his gaze. This time he couldn't clamp down on the gulp. His throat stuck to itself, tonsils sandpaper-rough.

“Kraglin...”

Blue fur rippled as the wind filtered through the trees. Kraglin remained perfectly still. He loomed taller than ever – _lanky git,_ an internal voice muttered on habit. His legs had acquired that third crook Yondu associated with dogs: an elongated arch and a clawed heel that never touched the ground. The jumpsuit had been decimated over the transformation process and the forest hike that followed it; the occasional frayed thread zigzagged between his fur.

As for Kraglin himself? Well, he watched Yondu with no recognition. But those claws had yet to slash, and those needle-teeth had yet to bury in Yondu's throat and give him the bilgesnipe-treatment. Yondu had to focus on the positives.

“You,” he whispered, cupping Kraglin's cheek rough and firm as always. “It's you, ain't it. Yer in there. I know it, I know...”

Fur ran through the chips in his nails. He felt warm, Yondu realized; radiating so much heat that even at arm's length, it was like standing in front of an open engine-valve. Like Kraglin would crisp up and combust, like the fire in his belly might eat him alive.

Hey. That was what Yondu was here for.

Yondu forced his stare to dawdle down the final stretch of its marathon, to land on Kraglin's groin.

Weren't just his limbs what had undergone a growth spurt. His navy cock stood erect. It pulsated visibly, veins squirming worm-like under the cartilage rings, which wound around it like the slide on a helterskelter, the grain on a drill.

“Huh,” said Yondu, a little strangled.

Kraglin's claws dug into his waist. Not to break the skin; just to spin him around and hoist him up and pin him face-first on the -

Yondu spat out a mouthful of hair. “Can we like, relocate or sumthin'? Big boy here's gonna start stinkin' pretty soon – oh _fuck._ Kraglin, fuck, what'chu doin' boy, what'chu -”

He had big hands, not thick but _long,_ fingers like the legs on the cobweb spiders who nested in the corners of the _Warbird._ One planted itself between Yondu's shoulderblades, spanning easily from one side of his back to the other, a scratch of nails his only warning.

The other swatted his legs apart.

Kraglin grabbed one thigh, shoving until Yondu's knee bent. He teetered on one foot for a moment, but then Kraglin grunted and canted his hips up hard enough to bounce him.

The bilgesnipe took Yondu's weight; he fisted the pelt for purchase.

Kraglin's cock. Fuck, Kraglin’s cock. It throbbed between his legs, too thick to fit in a single hand. It expressed his want more eloquently than any word.

Simple lust, no frills or sentiment, suited to the animal he'd become. Just what Yondu always wanted. So why’d he miss it now: all that gushy nonsense, Kraglin kissing his neck and tracing spirals across his pouch and telling him he looked _pretty as an angel…?_

Kraglin thrust again: a firm fuck that scooted Yondu off the floor entirely. That was hardly a problem – the bilgesnipe's flank made for a mighty convenient fuck-chair, holding his ass at rutting height.

Kraglin snarled again. His talon ran down the zip-seam between Yondu's buttocks like he couldn't work out why there wasn't no visible hole.

“Wait,” Yondu gabbled, reaching desperately behind himself. He caught a handful of fur, and a wrist under it. Huh. Still as knobbly as he remembered, even if the bones were tough as tempered hull-steel. “Wait, it undoes. See?” He fumbled cack-handed for the fastener. “Look, jus' a zipper, jus' a -”

His hands were removed. They were gathered together in a single one of Kraglin's, and pinned above Yondu's head.

He kicked, feet inches from the floor. If they impacted, Kraglin didn't notice. He simply grunted at the bobbing ass, the leather around the seam darkened from Yondu's leaking slick. He ground his drill-bit of a cock over Yondu again, gathering a cheek for a squeeze that would leave ribbons of dark bruising in the morning.

If Yondu survived that long, of course.

“It's a _zip,_ idjit,” he insisted, as Kraglin's husky breaths took a turn for the growly. “Quit bein' a stars-damned _animal_ and _think -_ ”

A claw pressed on his cunt.

Yondu froze. So many adrenaline rushes in such a short space of time wasn't good for a guy of his age. This was really getting a bit repetitive, and he should call break before his heart gave out.

“Careful,” he croaked.

He didn't move – barely dared fill his lungs and empty them again. The claw wriggled, pushing inside him through the thin-worn leather.

He felt it. Intimately, in detail. The seat of his pants sagged from years of use, and there was enough give for Kraglin to twist his talon: a knife blade prying between delicate folds. Yondu wasn't as attuned to Elzyk's pheromones as Kraglin was, but even he caught the sudden intensity of the smell.

“Careful,” he said again, hearing the hungry snort, feeling the hot puff on his nape. “Kraglin, _careful._ Thas delicate equipment. Y'hear me, boy?”

That _boy_ had little effect – Kraglin didn't understand anything that came out of his mouth. It was all gabble to him, just noise, egging him on. But when the claw dragged upwards it did so slowly, slicing the material along the stitch-line.

Safe. For now. Yondu swallowed. “Activate earpiece,” he said, in the calm before the storm. Had his holler for Quill even reached its destination? Most likely not, but just to be safe... “Stand down, guys. S'fine.”

“What d'you mean, it's fine? What's happening down there -”

The breath on his ear rasped hard and fast as Yondu's pulse. Kraglin jolted, cock scrubbing over Yondu's ass again and again.

Yondu swallowed. He squirmed higher up the bilgesnipe, threading fingers through the fur and twisting until his knuckles burned.

“Uh,” he said, as Kraglin retreated once more, snuffling over his back before sliding his claws under the leather. They pressed on Yondu's rump like they were testing a fine steak – and stars, but what if he was getting the cloth out the way so he could sink his first bite?

No. Yondu couldn't think like that.

“Yondu?” warbled Peter in his ear. “Yondu, tell me you're alive, tell me -”

Kraglin slit the leather again, horizontally this time, opening a flap of fabric that Yondu was gonna have a hell of a time darning back to decency. He scrunched his eyes shut and licked his lips and concentrated, concentrated on the heat battering him from the body behind, the warmth ebbing from the bilgesnipe, the humid jungle air and the wet, slick ache between his thighs.

“Yondu, are you -”

“I'm fine. Deactivate again.”

Not a moment too soon. Kraglin didn't hesitate. He tilted him to the right angle, cockhead parting the folds, and _thrust._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Fhggjghg my brain is broken. But have fic. Kudos and comments = love x**


	12. And I Can Hear that Lullaby of a Midnight Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry it's been so long! Nevertheless, enjoy the first of the smut chapters. There are. A lot of these to come. 8I**

Yondu keened as the cock popped into him, one rubbery ring after the next. More, more. Wider, deeper, fuller.

It _hurt._

Sure, it made fun sounds, ones of a volume and squelchiness that would’ve had him and Kraglin sniggering too hard to continue if they were both in their right minds. But all the tingling lube in the galaxy couldn’t make them fit together.

Kraglin had grown. Thickened, lengthened. _Stiffened_ too. His cock used to follow the standard Xandarian model – hell, there’d been a time when Yondu wondered whether it'd hold his interest.

But he didn't keep Kraglin around because of what he rocked below-the-belt. Kraglin was loyal, and kind - too kind for their life really, although Yondu never said so because what the hell was he supposed to do if Kraglin left?

He admired Yondu and stood by him through banishment, accusations of child trafficking and unlawful son-acquisition, and even when he outranked him he still looked to him for direction, and -

Fuck, it hurt.

Yondu wound a thicker handful of bilgesnipe pelt, ground his teeth, and dealt with it.

He’d always liked a little bit of pain with his pleasure. If Kraglin _slowed down_ enough to let him savor it, the burn of being filled and filled and _filled_ until his cunt stretched so tight and sore it ached from his hips to the snapped roots underneath his golden teeth; Yondu might genuinely enjoy this.

But he didn’t.

 _Relax. You need to relax._ He cast his mind back, back, back, to long nights and mutual exploration and Kraglin's glistening cum on his pouch, as light from a thousand constellations poured through their porthole window, the two of them facing away from each other so they didn't have to tease one another for their smiles.

But they weren't on the _Eclector._ They were on this asteroid, selected from the charts Kraglin drew up for him. Kraglin didn't understand his need to leave his old life behind but didn't question it either. Kraglin supported him every step, leap, and lightspeed jump of the way. Yondu took him for granted for far too long.

Well, not anymore.

Yondu opened his eyes.

Kraglin shook, half-buried. He was waiting.

A hand rested on Yondu’s lower back. The ridges flared, scraping inside him. Another trickle slid out, tickling Yondu’s thigh, and he knew from the restrained shudder that Kraglin couldn't hold himself back much longer.

And yet. He waited. Waited for Yondu to calm down, so Kraglin wouldn't hurt him.

Yondu's throat closed up, but not from fear. _Kraglin._ Still there, still his. He knew this guy: the jackass who nuzzled Yondu's neck and left lovebites just under his collar line so he had to constantly readjust his scarf as he went about his day. He _knew him._

A taper dropped in Yondu's belly as Kraglin kneaded his pouch with one possessive hand. It found the tinder stacked there and danced its flame lightly along the edge.

This time, Yondu's squirm wasn't a half-assed bid for freedom.

“Okay,” he breathed, shutting his eyes.

The hands held him in place, strong and steady as belts in a pilot's chair. A forehead ducked to rest on the back of his nape. Yondu found himself chuckling at the familiarity of it.

“Okay, Kraglin. Okay.”

Whether or not he understood the words, Kraglin got the message. He pulled out, pushed in. Then again. Then again, and again, and again.

The scent thickened and thinned in time with the slam of Kraglin's hips: bilgesnipe-stink and blood and that tart zing from between his legs. And stars above, it was a _slam._

Kraglin fucked hard, curled over Yondu in a lean navy cage. His dick rasped on the outdraw. Yondu clung to his ridges, cunt dragged a little out of itself in a shimmery blue ring. Snapping at the air, Kraglin wedged his hand between them, helping stretch Yondu from the outside.

Yondu whinged, prised open between two claws. His cock throbbed against the bilgesnipe’s coarse brown pelt. Slick leaked everywhere, smearing between his thighs, across the ruined seat of his pants and his belly, silvering the matted hair around Kraglin’s groin.

Kraglin abruptly sunk another inch. Yondu balls, the spongey lips on either side of his cunt, rubbed against his last ridge, and he arched up, bow-taut and panting.

“K-Kraglin…”

The head nudged his cervix. It was sharp, bony, pointed like a dog's. Yondu squirmed when Kraglin angled forwards, driving against the tight inner ring.

“Fuck – shit – don’t think thas gonna – ain’t gonna _fit,_ Kraglin!”

Kraglin _growled_.

Plastered to Yondu’s back, the noise rumbled through the both of them. Yondu’s white-knuckle grasp of the pelt faltered. He felt himself quiver from the inside, loosening, pulsing wet and warm.

“Well, fuck,” he said, a little helplessly.

Slowly, sweetly, the tension drained from his chest and back. He was sinking and rising in synchrony, splitting away from himself, falling and flying into that empty-headed, limp-fucked fuzz that engulfed him on the rare occasion he let Kraglin get out the blindfold and a gag.

That was all the encouragement Kraglin needed. He grabbed Yondu’s hips, lifting them off the bilgesnipe entirely, and pistoned there, holding Yondu where he wanted him, driving in deep. The ridges popped in and out. The constant ripple left Yondu's legs twitching, toes curled into every thrust.

He couldn’t arch like this, couldn’t swing his ass and tease. Couldn’t do anything but lie there and _take it._

So that’s what Yondu did.

He clung to the bilgesnipe. Its hair snagged on the cracks in his nails. His feet kicked a foot off the floor. Sweat streamed from his forehead, which pressed on the pelt hard enough to ingrain the pattern of the fur, creasing the skin between his scars.

Like this, facedown, no fear of letting Kraglin mock him about his stupid expression once he was back to normal – not that the idiot _would –_ Yondu could let go. He panted wetly, mouth hanging slack, a little drool sliding over. His eyes rolled back and he _whined,_ the closest he’d ever come to begging, when Kraglin overestimated his backswing and popped out completely.

Lube webbed them together in silky strings. Kraglin’s next push missed the mark. He ground in place with a grumbly huff, probing with his cock, searching for the give.

Yondu knew that noise. Stars, he could barely think like this with Kraglin rocking back and forth, messily knocking off his clit. But he _knew that noise._

It was the noise Kraglin made (squelch, thrust, growl, _fuck, missed again_ ) when Yondu (just the head in, stretching him to fit it; yes, _please yes,_ please) won at cards ( _no_ ; he’d slipped down the bilgesnipe’s flank, too weak to hold himself up, _dammit_ ) because he _knew_ he'd be cheating; they both were, the aim of the game was simply to catch the other one in the act.

Kraglin's grumble deepened, turning guttural. He cupped Yondu under the groin, mashing his cock to his belly. Yondu's eyes shot wide. But there was no enraged howl, no betrayed chomp of teeth on his neck. Just a hoist, and a grunt and...

There. The blunt swell of Kraglin's cockhead, nudging against him once more.

“ _Shit,_ Kraglin.”

Segment by segment, moving in sure shunts, Kraglin sheathed himself as deep as he could.

They stayed there a moment. Then Kraglin started to move.

Yondu counted his inhales and doubled his exhales. This time, when Kraglin's hand squeezed his stomach to track the glide of his dick into and out of him, stretching his innards to its shape, Yondu squeezed him, best he could. He screwed back like he could cram another ridge inside.

There was something disturbingly erotic about it. Lifted like this, stuffed like this, filled and arranged by a partner big enough to use you like a toy. Something Yondu hadn't gotten his fix of with Kraglin's old body.

Not that he compared the two – but hey. It was a shame Kraglin hadn't hit rut two decades ago, when Yondu was still spry enough to keep up. They would’ve never left their cabin.

Still, spicing up the sex life was better late than never. Yondu concentrated on the rhythm. The forwards buck, the outwards suck. He timed his breathing to it, and his heartbeat steadied to match. The clonk of Kraglin's hips into his ass become the tick of the metronome, timeless and constant. It felt like they could do this forever. He crumbled beneath it, letting himself be moved, fucked up and over the bilgesnipe's side.

Matted fur scraped his belly like stubble-burn. Yondu was far gone enough to enjoy it, as Kraglin fucked in hard enough to hammer the base of his cunt.

“Hell. Oh _yeah._ Thassit, boy. Nearly there, nearly -”

Kraglin, obedient as ever, upped tempo. Yondu's ass ached from the pummel of his bony hips. It was all he could do to tangle his fingers as tightly as he could and hold on for his life.

Each gasp tasted of _animal_ and _sex._ He dug in his knees and braced himself, kicking a foot off the floor as Kraglin thundered through those last frenzied plunges, barged in as far as he could fit, and raised his head in a howl.

The note hung. Long. High. Carrying as his whistles. But louder – far louder. Victory and lust and _yes._

Yondu hissed as the first splash hit inside him. It ran back down, mingling with his slick, and Kraglin just kept cumming, gushing hard enough to bruise him from the inside.

The howl trailed. Kraglin shifted, screwing forwards into the stickiness. Yondu, through the daze and the arousal (and the small, treacherous thread of relief) wondered how he'd managed to jam his entire dick inside him without doing serious damage. He reached back, shaking, to find the sloppy join between their bodies.

And moaned when, rather than the tight meld of a groin to his, he stroked the two bulging globes that had inflated on the underside of Kraglin's prick.

Shit – he could actually feel his pulse through the skin, and wouldn’t that feel amazing inside him?

Shame he’d never know.

“Yeah,” he panted, once he could talk. “That _really_ ain't gonna fuckin' fit.”

From Kraglin's whine, he was well aware. He pawed at Yondu, knot crushing stickily against his wide-stretched lips.

Yondu could probably take it in terms of girth – he and Kraglin had been together a long time, Yondu'd always had a flair for the adventurous, and sometimes fists got shoved where fists were never intended to go.

But length-wise? Nuh-uh; not happening.

“I ain't apologizin',” he said. He crossed his arms and glared over the bilgesnipe’s spiny hackles, into the forest beyond. “Not my fault yer pecker got all big an' spiky an' shit.”

The trees swayed, rustling softly. When he craned up, Yondu couldn't see the glow from the M-ship thrusters. Thank flark. Quill and co were keeping their distance.

Would Kraglin see strangers as a threat? Yondu didn’t want to find out.

Despite all the changes to his anatomy, Kraglin still went soft after he came. His dick was a sluggish weight. It kept trying to slip out of Yondu, no matter how desperately Kraglin bucked against him.

His cum fell out too, drizzling down Yondu's inner thighs. It leaked thinner than usual, water more than syrup.

Without a hole snugged around it, Kraglin’s knot deflated. Yondu could’ve reached back, given it a squeeze, milked this out a little longer. In all truthfulness though, while this was fun, it'd be so much _funner_ if Kraglin would kiss his nape and mumble his name.

He waited for it: that whiskery press of lips, the quiet, fervent invocation of _cap’n._ It never came. Instead, Kraglin valiantly hitched his hips until the knot slumped to rest around his base in a fold of baggy skin. Then, still making that miserable whinge, he slid his hand from beneath Yondu, and withdrew.

When Kraglin turned him he wrapped a nervous hand over his prick, which bobbed at half-mast, unsure whether it wanted to commit to the arousal or soldier on through. The front of his body prickled from the friction burn. Thank the stars it hadn’t drawn blood.

Kraglin stooped over him. Cast by the canopy, shadows shifted across his red bug-eye lenses like flecks in a kaleidoscope. He scooted down, pushing Yondu higher up the bilgesnipe's side until Kraglin, quarter-squatted, was on eye-level with his dick.

Shit. Right now, that wasn't a part he wanted to see. If he got bitey, Yondu would need a lot of painful reconstructive surgery.

“What'cha doin',” he croaked, sand stuck in his throat.

The fuck hadn't been a marathon, not by their standards. Kraglin wasn't exactly in the mental space for lasting prowess, although it had been brutal enough to make up for it. Regardless, Yondu could do with a wet drink followed by a stiff one, and a couple hours to recuperate.

Kraglin didn't reply. He ducked between Yondu's thighs, pressing his face up close. Yondu tensed in preparation for a lick – only to _squeal,_ as rather than the damp silk of a tongue, his pussy split around Kraglin's nose.

“What the – wha' -”

Kraglin inhaled. He nuzzled the slack, white-seeping lips until Yondu was half-convinced he meant to fuck him like that too.

Yondu helped himself to two handfuls of hair; one from the bilgesnipe behind him, the other from Kraglin in front.

What was it Elzyk said? Kraglin was going through a way-overdue puberty. All this rutting and sniffing and snarling was the A Chiltarian equivalent of a teenage strops, or perhaps a teething phase.

“Teethin' phases,” Yondu whispered, twitching helplessly as Kraglin rubbed his nose on his clit again and again. The fuzz grew thin there, soft like the fur on a well-ripened peach. But Yondu was mighty sensitive right now, and the jolts shot straight into his dribbling cock. “Jus', jus' teethin' – oh _fuck.”_

Kraglin had evidently sniffed enough to satisfy him. He reared back, and Yondu saw disappointment – the most humanoid expression Kraglin had worn since he pounced.

 _Shit,_ he had time to think. _All that nookie better not have rubbed Elzyk’s gunk away._ He had the rest of the vial. But how was he supposed to reach it, when -

Kraglin rose to his full height. He looked even more alien than when he ripped out the bilgesnipe's throat: a seven-foot crane of a creature, crooked in all the wrong places.

Yondu froze. His body instinctively made itself small: a blue knot of muscle, tensed so hard he trembled.

The slick press against his slit came as a surprise. It grew and grew, a slippery bulb, each ridge bulging at his sore lips. It was easier than the first time; Yondu'd been ground open against the plump topside of Kraglin's knot. Yondu reached between them, flexing weakly around the sloppy prick. There it was. Loose skin at Kraglin's base, shunting back and forth with each squelching thrust.

Kraglin worked tirelessly. But while his teeth grazed Yondu's throat, he didn't bite down. Just... held them there, jaws wedged wide, drool pooling behind Yondu’s clavicles.

Lube shone, a stripe of it over the bridge of Kraglin’s nose. Yondu thumbed it away for him.

“Right,” he panted, as Kraglin’s claws prickled at his hips. “More sex it is.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WUH WOAH it's almost as if he needs you to smell pregnant before he can stop, Yondu..... I know you don't get pregnant IMMEDIATELY after unprotected sex, but hey. Aliens. :hand-waves all biology: Thank you for every comment and kudos!**


	13. It Sings to Me and It Sounds Familiar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **And more sex, ad nauseum.**
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> **TW: SOME OF THIS SEX IS VERY PAINFUL AND NOT FUN. I won't spoil what happens, but Yondu has to say stop. Kraglin does stop, because he's a good boy, but knots are involved and make things very difficult. If _overly rough bestial sex that causes realistic pain_ is not your thing, PLEASE don't read this. You can skip ahead to the next chapter when it's done!**
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> ****

Okay, yeah. Being hauled about was hot - but when it came down to it, this angle kinda sucked.

With Yondu belly-up, the passage into his body was wonky. Between that and Kraglin's dick being simply too hard to bend around corners, Yondu was in for a shallow ride.

Kraglin seemed to notice his predicament – that, or his snorts and huffs were down to how he could only feed half of it into Yondu before hitting a natural blockade. It wasn't _awful,_ having him prod and poke at Yondu's g-spot, but this wasn't about Yondu getting off. Face to face like this, there was no hiding how Kraglin's teeth glinted like icicles, how his nostrils flared like those of an angry Svartalf bull, and how the snarl on his face looked a helluva lot more like anger than lust.

Yondu gulped. He clutched the bilgesnipe, then Kraglin, then his own thighs, muscle tremoring from being held apart so long.

“Turn me over,” he said. Not a plea. Not an order either – somewhere in between.

Kraglin paused, dick just breaching the folds. His red eyes didn't seem capable of narrowing, lidless as a lizard or a fly. But he licked them again, introducing a shine of spittle to the lenses in his freaky bug-like version of a blink.

“Over,” said Yondu, wriggling to demonstrate. He contracted, pushing Kraglin out of him best he could, and squirmed sideways, making to roll.

He didn't get very far.

A twist, a slam, fur in his face. Yondu landed over the dead bilgesnipe once more, Kraglin's snarl rumbling through him.

Claws bit at his shoulder, more chewing on his asscheeks. Yondu inhaled fur, coughed, and punched the carcass in revenge.

“I ain't tryin' to leave,” he gritted. “I swear it, ya idjit. Just wanna make this a bit comfier for you, is – ah!”

Kraglin found give. He thrust, filling Yondu like he was starving for it.

Hot _damn._ The ripple of those ridges left Yondu convulsing. His cock twitched erratically, still pent up from before, sandwiched between the bilgesnipe and his belly.

Yeah, it would be _nice_ to abscond to a cosier locale – but hell, Yondu was a Ravager. He'd taken dick in far less hygienic places, and had yet to contract anything that made his goolies turn black and drop off. He hadn't visited a gyno since Stakar found out about the extra baggage in his underwears during one very awkward shower session and bribed Aleta into dragging him there.

But in Yondu's experience, there was little that _couldn't_ be fixed by shoving a medibead up where none of the galaxy's collective suns shone, to tackle the itches and freaky smells at their source. In his eyes, so long as neither party contracted sepsis, sex was a victory.

Going exclusive with Kraglin helped too. Bot-hookers didn't count; so long as they were thoroughly washed and sterilized between clients, there was little risk of cross-contamination. And -

If there was one place you didn't want to be contemplating the sores and blisters of STDs past, it was while you were being drilled on your belly by your hormone-fuelled fuckbeast of a mate.

That fuckbeast was getting into the swing of things again. Their bodies met with a crude squelch and parted with a cruder one. Jizz from the last round made everything sloppier, smattering Kraglin's fur whenever he drove deep. Yondu's mind fed him an image, unprompted, of how debauched they must look.

Cunt plump and stretchy, flexing wetly into the thrusts. Cum creaming his ass. White striping blue. Kraglin hands framing him, groping him, dragging his asscheeks wide so his prepped little pucker pursed in invitation...

 _Maybe later,_ Yondu thought. Sure, round two was a bit more sore than before, but Kraglin obviously needed this. You had to let Groot run himself exhausted before you put him to bed, and Yondu applied the same principle here.

Kraglin would fuck until he was tired. Then he would stop.

They'd give the jizz to the Collector (and soon thereafter steal it back again). Then, with the exception of Kraglin's new look and one very pissed off Ancient, life would go back to normal. 

All in all, there was only one problem.

When a nine-inch dick met a cunt that was five inches when interested in the proceedings, you were guaranteed some frustration. Not enough, in Yondu's opinion, to justify the heightening snaps and growls from behind him, or how Kraglin hoisted one of his legs, clawed foot gripping the bilgesnipe's hide to achieve a squarer angle, and pile-drove him onto the dead beast's belly until Yondu could hear its last meal churning in its intestinal tract.

But what got him hollering, other than the in-out rasp of friction, was when Kraglin pressed his barbed cockhead to the pinched clamp of the muscle inside him, and, with a swift sharp stab of a thrust, punctured it.

The tip of his cock pushed into Yondu's cervix. Yondu _screamed._

No.

_No._

Shit. _Shit._ If Kraglin pulled out, he was gonna take something with him. Yondu's innards clutched too tight, spasming with pain.

“Stop,” he whimpered, burying his face against the bilgesnipe, snivelling into the peppery musk of its skin. “Kraglin, _stop._ ”

Kraglin's high-hitched leg was a prop on which his own could rest: a sweltering seam of flesh, separated by leather and fur. The hand under him gripped his cock, feeling how the swell slid away, blood drawn back into Yondu's system as his pussy pulsed and burned.

Kraglin didn't make to thrust.

Yondu was grateful, for all of three seconds before Kraglin jerked and came.

Holy _shit,_ that hurt.

Skinny abs trembled against Yondu's ass. The chest curved over his back was wracked with similar shudders from the effort it took Kraglin not to grind in place.

Big boy couldn't complain though. He had by far the better side of this deal.

Yondu had a cock to contend with. One that was jammed deeper than it was ever supposed to go, and, to his concern, expanding rapidly around the base, prising his vulva apart around a lump that seemed to grow alongside the blistering, sweltering, broiling, stars-forsaken _pain._

His brain felt boggy. His higher functions shut off one after the other, winking out like faulty headlamps. He managed a single thought before slipping down the plughole and into the dark:

_Fuck me, Kraglin better not remember this._

 

* * *

 

 

Yondu came to. He sort of wished he didn't.

He felt like he'd been beaten to within an inch of his life. However, in his long and ample experience, he could say with some certainty that most attackers didn't start at the cunt.

“Fuck,” he burbled.

How long had he been unconscious for? The light hadn't noticeably altered, so it couldn't have been more than minutes. Kraglin's netherbits definitely hadn't had chance to cool.

Claws dug into his wrists. Kraglin was trying to turn him around again, this time while Yondu was knotted in place. That stretch might have registered as Damn Decent if it weren't for the zap through his cervix, which had his jaw dropping and soundlessly pushing out a scream.

Kraglin stilled. The hand cupping Yondu's belly had shifted to his side, ready to flip him. But at that contracting, juddering shriek, silent though it was, Kraglin leaned close instead, snuffling up the cord in Yondu's neck.

 _I got you,_ Yondu imagined him saying, through the delirious fire in his nerves.  _I got ya now, cap'n. S'okay._

But of course, Kraglin said nothing. Nothing at all.

He nuzzled there, hum rumbling up from the depths of his chest. His nose dug between Yondu's vertebrae, rubbing the shrivelled old scars.

The warm gust of air was oddly soothing. Or perhaps that was just the slosh of cum inside him, so much of it that the slightest movement made Yondu feel like a rolled bottle.

He stayed tight-wound for a moment out of sheer stubbornness as Kraglin rubbed apologetic whiskers on his neck. Then, realizing he was cutting off his own nose to spite his face – or injuring his innards to spite Kraglin, same difference – he concentrated on unclenching top to bottom, letting his head roll loose at the end of his neck, cheek pressed against the bilgesnipe pelt while his feet dangled limply for the floor.

One small mercy – Kraglin went soft before his knot did. Yondu no longer felt like he was in labor. Hell, was he glad their early attempts all wound up with negative symbols on the tests and muttered lies of _thank flark for that, never wanted brats anyway_.

But right now, Kraglin couldn't retreat if he tried. Not without hurting him more.

Yondu wasn't sure what he was trying to do, twisting him so they were face to face. But it wouldn't be pretty if Kraglin lost patience.

“Go on,” he croaked. “Do it. Slow though. Real, fuckin' – Kraglin, _shit._ I said _slow..._ ”

Kraglin's little whine could almost be mistaken for a 'sorry'. He slowed to a pace that at the least didn't make the agony worse.

“Well,” said Yondu, one he settled.

His back conformed to the curve of the bilgesnipe's gut, groin sandwiched to Kraglin's pubes. The hair was grizzled, but softer than the bilgesnipe's, just a little. It tacked to his backside, tickling his parted, slippery balls. With Kraglin stooped over, they were practically nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest, man-to-man.

Yondu made the most of it. He glared and jabbed his finger hard into Kraglin's chest.

“That weren't fun. You hear me, Krags? Not. Fun.”

It was hard to be afraid of a guy, even a navy one with far too many teeth, when he gave you puppy eyes.

When Kraglin tried to wrap Yondu's legs tighter around his waist and hoist him in a front-piggyback, Yondu shook his head, face bloodless. “Naw, naw – c'mon, let the knot go down before ya move me. F'flarks sake, boy -”

A grunt. A heave. He was up.

Yondu gasped. The knot was an iron ball. It kept him upright, stretched water-tight around it. With Kraglin's cockhead smushed against his cervix, his lower body burned like that time he sat on an electric moomba-prod, just to see what would happen.

“K-Kraglin...”

Kraglin whined. Yondu managed a smile – more a wobble, tense as his innards.

“I know, I know. Yer stuck, ya big goof. Jus'... Jus' be slow, yeah? Real, _real_ slow. We can move wherever you wanna once this's gone down...”

His voice shook. The vial dug into his hipbone – miraculously still intact. The comms piece weighed behind his ear, comforting as the squeeze of a hand.

He could call Quill. They'd stun Kraglin or – or _something,_ they hadn't had time to hash out the specifics. But they wouldn't kill him. They knew he'd never forgive them for that. Then Yondu could use what was in him for the Collector's sample, and life would carry on. As much is life could, when you had a seven-foot hunched wolf-man as your new first mate.

Or captain. Whatever. Yondu wasn't in the headspace for semantics.

But Kraglin was keening, a high noise better suited to kittens. He laid Yondu down again, running tender fingers over his chest, claws catching on the lip of his velvety pouch.

“Thassit,” Yondu crooned, voice gentle as he could make it. He returned the stroking with a shaky hand, mapping lean muscle under fur. “Good boy. Good boy. Just gotta let yer thingie shrink. Then baby, then ya can take me wherever you like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hope those who read this enjoyed it! Tell me what you thought? Thank you for every kudos and comment! I've been reshuffling the chapters a little to try and make them more even in length, but I think I'll leave this one as a shortie so folks can skip it if they need.**


	14. It's Where I Learned About Living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The last pure-sex chapter! After this, it's onto the happy ending. :3 Warnings this chapter for: a guest appearance from Peter that's awkward for everyone involved.**

“Where we goin’,” Yondu mumbled, rubbing his cheek on Kraglin’s shoulder.

He’d been gathered to his chest, a hold Kraglin never would’ve had strength for if he was his usual weedy self. Right now, he barely seemed to notice Yondu’s weight, loping past the shrubs and star-leafed ferns at the forest’s edge to where the vegetation receded into barren volcanic-black basalt. Yondu didn’t have the energy to insist he could walk on his own, much less the energy to actually do it.

He was fucked-out. Tired. Sore. The soreness amplified and ebbed whenever a footfall jostled him, making him gnaw his lips until they looked as raw as he felt.

“Kraglin? Where we – oh.”

Above them stretched the cliff, pitted with caves like pox-scars on a guttersnipe. Kraglin wasn’t a complete beast – he might not have the mental faculties to construct a bivouac like Elzyk’s, but he still needed shelter to survive. Yondu just prayed the signal from his earpiece could transmit through rock.

Which reminded him…

Careful not to disturb Kraglin more than necessary – the big guy seemed content to stalk along, flaccid cock retracted into a sheath between his thighs – he pressed the broadcast button on the earpiece.

“Quill,” he said out the corner of his mouth.

The reaction was instant – a burst of static that made both of them jump. Yondu hissed, and there was a corresponding gasp from the Milano.

“Oh my god! Is he eating you?”

Kraglin froze. His head flicked from side to side like a moomba shaking off flies. His buggy eyes strained at their sockets, scanning the treeline for another heat signature. They found none, and Yondu replied while he was distracted, talking soft as his scream-roughened voice allowed.

“Idjit. He ain’t, we’re fine. Jus’ keepin’ ya in the loop, is all. We’re shiftin’ to a cave – check my co-ordinates in five cycle-fractions and we oughta be inside.”

He paused, turning the next question over in his mind. Quill, sensing the hesitation, found his voice in Yondu’s silence:

“Are you okay? Yondu, please, just tell me you’re okay. That he isn’t… hurting you.”

He was, but it wasn’t like he meant it.

“We’re fine,” Yondu reiterated, letting an edge of frustration creep in. “Jus’ bring some painkillers when ya swing by with that empty vial.”

“Painkillers?”

If he craned, he could see the head of Kraglin’s dick poking from its sheath, all shiny and wet and navy as the rest of him. It made Yondu ache to look at it too long.

“Yeah. No more questions, Quill.”

“But -”

“Bring the vial an’ the painkillers. Take ‘em again. S'all you have to do.”

He cut the transmission before Quill could stammer through a reply. Kraglin, head cocked, hummed inquisitively in the back of his throat. Yondu, helping himself to a steadying handful of soft blue fur, rearranged himself until he was sitting in his arms rather than draping like an airless blow-up doll, and coaxed his features into a smile.

“S'alright, baby,” he told him, as the quiet crunch of dry leaves under Kraglin's paws changed to the scritch of claw on rock. “S'alright.”

Kraglin's nostrils twitched. He frowned, sniffing like he was attempting to isolate a particular scent.

Like he was trying to work out why his mate smelled so tasty.

Yondu touched the half-full glass in his pocket. He traced its curved slope through the leather; a reassurance that it was still whole. He'd apply the rest as soon as they were inside. So long as Kraglin didn't act on this suspicion...

“You wanna dick me again, yer gonna have to use my ass,” he purred. His low drawl made the fur bristle on Kraglin's chest. “S'nice an' slicked up for ya, an' all.”

He wriggled a hand between his legs, hooked over Kraglin's far arm. A dribble of sweet-scented lube and pheromones smeared between his cheeks. Yondu gathered it, rubbing his pucker until he'd coated one finger with aromatic slick.

“Here,” he said, tugging it loose. The scent intensified, and Kraglin licked his eyeballs again, drool gathering between his serrated fangs. Yondu stuck his finger in his mouth before Kraglin got too het up – he'd rather not be fucked in the open, which was exactly what the plateau was.

They'd left the jungle behind them. Rock formations warped underfoot like bark in an ancient oak, twisted and contorted over decades by seismic shifts as the asteroid did its best to break apart. The caves were only a few paces away. From how heavily Kraglin was breathing, and from the tapered cockhead jabbing Yondu in the hamstrings, he might not have that long.

Far in the distance, wreathed by the clouds that shrouded the mouth of the crater's cauldron, Yondu saw M-ship headlamps glinting against the marbled sky.

“No,” he said, yanking his fur handful in an effort at distraction. “No, you ain't fuckin' me here. Get inside, then ya can stick it in my ass like a good lil' boy. You want that, yeah? Wanna be good for me?”

He wasn't sure how much Kraglin understood, but the timbre of his voice was enough to have him whinging like the Orloni that begged for scraps under the mess hall tables. He crossed the last hundred meters to the cave mouth in a gait so smooth that it felt like they were gliding.

As soon as the rock closed above their head, Yondu was dropped, rolled onto his stomach, and -

The M-ship had drifted closer. They were in the cave mouth, and if Yondu could see them, anyone in the cockpit endowed with better than average vision – say; a cyborg, a genetically enhanced rodent, or a half-celestial – would be getting the close-up view.

“No,” he said again, swatting Kraglin as he arranged him. “Move back, idjit. Shadow, yeah? Not sunlight.”

Kraglin scoffed; a harsh grunt of sound. Yondu yelped as his legs were yanked from under him, a clawed hand pulling each ankle, hauling him roughly over the rock in reverse.

The temperature difference was remarkable. Beneath his belly and through the opened slit in his pants, the broil of sun-baked rocks turned to smooth cold slabs, clammy as tombstones in a crypt.

Fitting metaphor. Their surrounds certainly felt very catacomb-esque.

Yondu had explored his new home, taking Rat and Twig (and occasionally Quill, when he wasn't being irritating) for days of jungle-slogging and vine-hacking, and the occasional bout of spelunking too. He knew that, should they retreat another fifty yards, their cave opened into a natural cathedral, the central auditorium of the entire cavernous network. Stalactites dangled from the vaults, the plip of water reverberating from ghostly-white mineral deposits and porous walls.

The entrance, in contrast, was relatively slim. No way near large enough for an M-ship to nose in after them. Thank the stars.

They'd retreated far enough that Yondu could only catch the occasional glimpse of sky. Quill and his crew might be nosy a-holes, but a few in their number knew what common decency meant.

One, to be precise. Her name was Gamora, and Yondu was very, very grateful to her right about now.

Kraglin pawed his ripped pants, still uttering that high-pitched whinge. His talons shredded the leather like wet tissue, slicing the worn fabric from Yondu's skin. They drew cross-hatched scratches over his thighs, not quite deep enough to draw blood. But they still scoured the first layer of skin, bringing navy to the surface in long puffy lines. Yondu squirmed like a hooked fish when he saw Kraglin's nostrils doing their creepy fluttering thing; sealing flat like a seal's before blasting wide, steam curling in the dank cave air.

“Lemme just...” Yondu fished for the vial. His shredded pants laid around him like down in a nest, clinging to his skin with sweat.

He had to hurry. Any moment now Kraglin would lose patience, follow that tantalizing fresh-blood scent to his body, and _bite..._

Yondu brushed the crystal. He freed it with a triumphant grin, refracted light from the cave mouth glancing in all directions, split into every color of the rainbow.

“Kay. Let's get me nice an' smelly again, huh Krags?”

Kraglin managed to make licking his eyeballs look petulant. Someone was impatient – the cock pronging from the fur around his groin was hard as the columns stabilizing the cavern's roof. The spiral ridge protruded half a centimeter from the thick, dark meat. Drying jizz left depth markers, notches that showed how deep he'd been buried at the point of orgasm.

One crusty ring sat above his deflated knot tissue, and one below. Looking at it made that pain coil around Yondu's pelvis like a worm under a laser point.

Shit. He'd hoped Quill would arrive sooner, drugs in hand – or left in the cave entrance, that would be safer. But Kraglin's tongue had migrated from his eyeballs to his lips, sweeping his furry chops and gumming the hair back around his mouth in the A-Chiltarian's version of tucking a napkin into their collar.

He scented the air again. His big clawed hands turned Yondu on one side than the other, rolling him as easily as dough, checking there wasn't an edible critter squashed beneath.

His IQ might've taken a plummet, but there was still a glimmer of that old Obfonteri wit. Not long before he put two and two together, sussed that the meat-stink wasn't hiding the pheromones, but _the other way around..._

Yondu groped behind himself. He mapped the slab with touch, fingertips skating lichen and striated rock, until they grazed a pebble. This was tossed, with little finesse, further back into the cave.

Kraglin's eyesight wasn't the best. From the Collector's descriptions, he sensed heat rather than light. Yondu was gambling on him relying on his other senses.

Good call. Kraglin jerked upright, snorting. The tufts on his head flattened to his skull like Rocket's ears when the rodent got spooked.

He crawled over Yondu, defensive as a beast guarding its kill, boxing him between skeletal arms and those powerful three-crooked legs of his, thigh muscle bunched in preparation to spring. All the while he surveyed the dark mouth where the entry cave opened into the central chamber, growl rumbling thunder-low.

Yondu made the most of the distraction. He unplugged the stopper and drizzled the rest of the liquid onto his stinging cunt. Stretching his stiff thighs apart, he massaged more between his asscheeks and plunged coated fingers deep inside.

There. Perfect.

Kraglin's gaze snapped to his. As he no longer had pupils, his head came with it.

Yondu let the vial tinkle to one side as he treated his mate to a slow-spreading lahar of a smirk.

“Hey baby,” he purred again, knuckling the fuzz on Kraglin's cheek. “Miss me?”

 

* * *

 

Suffice to say, when a panting Peter entered the cave, Kraglin was balls deep in Yondu's ass and grunting like it was a competition.

Yondu, eyes shut, didn't notice until he heard the “Oh my god ew.”

It didn't quite _click._ Not until Kraglin froze.

Then his mate rammed _in_ , rough enough to jar Yondu from his happy-haze. He bowed over him in that protective four-legged stoop, and snarled, full-on _snarled,_ at the intruder.

Yondu's cheek was stuck to his forearm with drool. Gross. It took a little tugging to unpeel, and he grimaced at the pull in his beard hairs as he raised his head to see -

“Fuck.”

Silhouetted in the doorway, one hand thrown dramatically over his eyes, Quill tentatively groped around until he found a flat plate of rock to drop his duffel.

“There you go,” he said. “Empty vial, painkillers. Uh. More lube too. Gamora suggested we put some water in too. Said the two of you might be a lil' dehydrated.”

He sounded strangled. The shopping list was recited in a flurry. Yondu didn't blame him. He wanted this to be over as fast as possible too.

“Get the hell outta here, boy."

Kraglin's growl amplified. Hot drool flecked Yondu's shoulder, spittle flecking Kraglin's drawn-back lips. He pushed into Yondu's ass like he was trying to prove a point, rumbling like a gummed-up thruster and glaring at Peter something fierce.

Unfortunately, the stretch of Kraglin's knot made Yondu's own sneer rather wobbly – something Quill couldn't help but notice, if his second, more emphatic “ _Gross_ ” was anything to go by.

Yondu bared his teeth, mimicking the beast behind him.

“I said _go._ Go on, git. This ain't no sp-sp-spectator – ah shit, Kraglin fuck thas, _fuck_ – no spectator sport!”

His voice cracked and shook like the gravity core had flipped and the resultant earth tremors were rending him apart. He wasn't in control of his body. His ass sucked desperately on the outdraw, pleading for Kraglin to keep him full, keep him stuffed and trembling and shaking from the pressure of it, nine fat inches bound up in silky blue.

His eyes rolled back, jaw slack and sweat trickling to puddle in the dip between his collarbones, more trickling down his inner thighs. Or perhaps that was just lube – lube and pheromone gel and slick, the scent of it filling his head like incense from a burner.

Would've been real nice if Quill had left.

Kid had turned around – for his own sanity as well as Yondu's. “Y-you said you had to put something in the vial for the Collector...”

“Later. I'll call ya. When ready. Go. Now.”

Kraglin snarled again, throaty and dangerous, all threat. Yondu's nails screeched as they dragged along the rock, aching as the rest of him, unable to find purchase.

Yondu felt his face contort; mouth dropping around a silent cry, hot waves breaking through him. When he shuddered down from that edge, new wetness coating his thighs, Quill was gone.

Thank fuck. Confronting him was gonna be awkward as hell; Yondu only hoped the boy would be more mortified than he was.

Judging by the claws scarring the rocks on either side of his head, it was only being mid-sex that had prevented Kraglin from pouncing.

There was too much lust in Yondu's brain for him to think of the future – or at least, any future beyond his next orgasm, which clambered from the ashes of his last in a smoking phoenix-tornado. Fucking _cunt_ and _ability to multiple_ and _Kraglin's fucking dick..._ It whirled faster and tighter as the pounding took on that quivery edge that preceded a howl.

“Mine,” Kraglin snarled. Yondu's air got stuck halfway up the pipe.

It could've been his imagination – vocal cords reverberating around a growl, offset by the echoing cavern. Or it might not have been.

Yondu dared to let himself hope. He sunk into that floaty place where everything was weightless and liquid, and the stretch of Kraglin inside him and the scratch of his claws on his nape was all that he knew.

“Yeah,” he said, in case there was any doubt. “Yours.”

That was all Kraglin needed. His knot caught in Yondu, swollen larger than a fist. And Kraglin, pinning Yondu with one hand on his throat, did what instinct willed him, threw back his head, and _howled._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hope y'all enjoyed! This chapter may be squashed into the next one in a bid to keep them roughly similar lengths, but comments are HUGELY appreciated and cherished. As are kudos! Please hit that button! <3**


	15. It's Where I Learned About Love

Peter would, at a later date, tease him for that howl mercilessly. Yondu would join in – because he suspected it sounded fucking ridiculous to anyone not caught up in the motion, the grinding pulse of Kraglin's rut, the stink of sex and sweat and musk that billowed through the cave like radon gas seeping from the rocks.

The note peaked for a shrill five seconds before beginning its descent. The cavern walls transformed the sound into something far greater than it was, a cacophony of bellowing A Chiltarian ancestors.

The idea of Kraglin's progenitors watching them fuck from beyond the grave was too creepy for words. Doubtlessly, they'd be disappointed he hadn't sowed his wild oats in a more receptive vessel. But their grandchild would be along soon enough – albeit with the help of a third party. Then all Yondu had to worry about was kidnapping them.

He wasn't too worried. That was the top skill on his resume, after all.

Yondu waited for the sticky sluice of cum which meant the knot had deflated. The few remaining scraps from his pants peeled off when he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs.

He didn't know how long it had been. While Yondu could see his slice of sky darkening from midday blue to the russet hues that preceded twilight, his brain was a soggy sponge: in no state to be calculating time.

Retrieve the supplies though? That he could do – if Kraglin would only let him go long enough.

“C'mon,” Yondu grumbled, plucking at the arms lashed around his waist. “I got a lil' while before ya get back up again, and I ain't never one for snugglin'.”

Kraglin shook his head and clung tighter. His snout jabbed Yondu's pierced ear, breath rasping drily over his pulsepoint.

“Ya don't want water?” Yondu strained helplessly against his grip. “You gotta be thirsty. Don't want'chu twiggin' out on me before yer ridiculous refractory period gets ya back in the game.”

Kraglin made a series of grouchy animal snorts and clung tighter.

Rolling his eyes, Yondu dragged them forwards a pace, groping the rock for friction. He inchwormed towards the cave mouth, pulling Kraglin along.

The idjit lay deadweight on his back, making this as difficult as possible. Yondu coudn't smother his fond grin at his head burrowed between his shoulderblades. He braced for another pull.

They made their way to the supplies like that, Yondu's ass feeling soft and slick and loose, cum sliding out whenever he moved. He made a beeline for the water canister, flipping up the sucky-top and slurping a gulp. He hadn't felt so thirsty since he last crashed on a desert planet, the moisture baked out of him by the sun.

The light of the dwarf star dimmed to violet, but he was still parched. His dry, cracked tongue struggled to guide the water down the right hole. He managed not to waste any by choking on it, and swallowed with a relieved gasp before wriggling onto his back and pushing the bottle at the man now using his chest as his personal pillow.

“Here. Drink before ya wither away.”

Kraglin twisted his head to one side then the other. His tongue made a scratchy, papery sound, when it made its customary circle over each bulging eyeball. Yondu winced on his behalf.

“Drink, Krags. C'mon.”

Kraglin didn't seem to understand what he was asking. The bottle hung heavy at the end of Yondu's outstretched arm; he replaced it by the bundle with a sigh.

So this was what the Collector meant by _insurance._ If Yondu didn't comply with his wishes, Kraglin would shrivel away, nothing left but bones and fur. And, most likely, his dick. That filled as Yondu watched, despite Kraglin discomforted twitches.

Of course. This was rough on Yondu, but the poor dude's cock wasn't made for constant friction either. The flesh around the spiral ridge looked _raw._

“Shit,” Yondu muttered. He caught Kraglin by the nape, dragging him down so their foreheads rested together; a line as sweaty as the one between their bellies and their tangled, naked legs. “S'alright, boy. I gotcha. Gonna get you all fixed up.”

He hooked the empty vial, but not before dribbling a little water onto each of Kraglin's filmy eyes.

“C'mon then,” he grunted, dabbling at the sticky mess tacking their groins together. A sample the Collector wanted? A sample he'd get. “Les' get this over with.”

Bodily fluids decanted, Yondu stoppered the vial again – having found the bung after a fraught minute of swatting Kraglin's snout whenever he tried to mount him.

Peter was summoned. He took the tube, making no comment but pulling a plethora of disgusted faces as his nose and imagination informed him what it contained.

In due course, another was returned, filled with a translucent liquid of a marginally more viscous consistency. This time, Peter kept his eyes shut.

Yondu wasn't in a mental state to appreciate it.

Everything _hurt_. He hadn't grabbed the painkillers from the care package – no time – but he was sure as hell looking forwards to them. But despite the burn, his heart thudded at a sedate pace, and he kept his breathing slow.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the nose and out again.

He couldn't remember when Kraglin pushed inside him. Only that it had happened. Now, it felt like they'd never stopped, never paused for air.

It scraped dry, lube depleted. The stretch ached less than the _saw,_ and that was merciless as torture.

One consolation – Kraglin seemed just as tired as he was. He moved in langorous thrusts, tongue hanging dry.

It cracked, just slightly, at the tip. Yondu watched that bead of blood as Kraglin moved back, forth, back again, throbbing deep inside, staring at him all the while with his mournful, unblinking eyes. It wobbled there, a dark red dew drop, more and more gathering until that single moment – _plink!_ \- when it fell.

Yondu reached up, shaking. He wiped the wetness off his cheek.

“Not long now,” he whispered, threading his bloody fingers through the hair on Kraglin's chest. “Not long, yeah? Nearly there. Nearly there.”

Sure enough, Kraglin jerked and shuddered and _snarled,_ and then there was nothing left but the strain of a solid knot and the settling wet warmth inside him.

_Nearly there._

Yondu, vial at the ready, uncorked.

“Come back,” he said, as he poured it over where they were joined.

“Come back,” he demanded, as Kraglin nuzzled his neck then started that familiar trek down, knot slipping from his overtaxed body, nose pressed between pectorals and under the lip of a pouch, into an armpit and over a hip, before he snuffled around Yondu's spent dick and into the warm space beneath, slippery with his seed.

“Come back to me,” he pleaded and shut his eyes, shuddering at the rake of breath across sizzling nerve endings, the sinking fear that the Collector had lied.

Why would he fulfil his end of the bargain? Yondu gave him what he wanted.

The Collector knew of his dealings with Ego. He knew Yondu would swing by sometime in the not-so-distant future and pillage his cold storage for any trace of a cryogenically frozen embryo. If he was anywhere near as wise as he pretended, he'd use this opportunity to dispose of the pair of them permanant-like...

“Yondu,” Kraglin mumbled. Nails tightened on Yondu's hips, four sharp puncture-points on either side. Yondu winced, waiting for teeth – but next moment Kraglin sagged, tension leaving his muscles, face still crushed to Yondu's lap. “ _Cap'n._ ”

Yondu's breath hitched. He gathered Kraglin's hair, winding fluffy strands around and around his fingers, so tight they lost circulation.

“Took ya long enough,” he managed. If his voice was hoarser than usual, he could blame it on the dehydration.

Kraglin didn't say another word – too tired, and dry-throated into the bargain. He scrubbed a fuzzy cheek along Yondu's thigh. His fur was softer than stubble, but those thighs had been through quite a lot lately – wrapped around Kraglin's waist, grated against the bilgesnipe, banged off the stony floor.

Yondu winced. He dragged him up by the hair that sprouted from his scalp.

Kraglin's eyes were still red, still bulbous and buggish and _weird._ But they were _his_. They were his.

When Yondu slithered away to fetch the canteen and pressed the nozzle to his mate's crackly lips, he was met with the weak, tentative sucks of a litter runt pulling on its mother's teat. He fed Kraglin like that, keeping the bottle tilted at a comfortable angle for his neck.

His own stomach wizened for want of moisture, but he could wait. He'd let Kraglin do most of the work, after all – he needed this more than Yondu did.

His reward was the swivel of a tongue over each dusty eye-lens. This time, it didn't make that horribly squeaky-dry sound. Kraglin polished them until they gleamed, matching the shards mounted in Yondu's skull.

“Cap'n,” Kraglin repeated. His tongue lolled from one corner of his mouth. He looked so dopey that Yondu couldn't help but chuckle.

“Yeah. S'me.”

“W-Where... What's...?”

“How much d'you remember?”

“Flashes? I – I – I don't... There's these...” Kraglin made firework motions beside his head, exaggerated by his freaky-long hands. “ _Flashes_.”

Still Kraglin's voice. Deeper, yeah. Kinda growlier too. It'd take some getting used to – but if you concentrated, you could tell it was the same guy. The same dropped consonants, the same lil' stutters when he was confused, the same awkward twang.

Kraglin.

_His._

There was only one thing for it. Yondu wrapped his bare, seed-smeared body around his head in a suffocating hug.

They'd done it – they'd survived. Him and Kraglin, both of them. Judging by the pathetic slaps against his biceps, Kraglin still required air to breathe, so perhaps he should let him get on with it – but, for the first time since the whirlwind cleared and revealed his lil' Peter Quill holding a stone that levelled planets in his palm, Yondu felt like he could whoop and punch the air and scream _yes_ at the whole damn galaxy.

Or y'know. He could, if everything didn't _hurt._

Water first, he decided, glancing at the duffel and wondering whether he could get to the painkillers before Kraglin noticed them. Water and sleep.

* * *

 

 

The fireflies swirled. They rose on the thermal-currents that wobbled up from the swamps, helicoidal spiral opening onto the open night sky, a constellation in miniature, a helix of tiny stars.

If it hadn't been for their movement – dipping and whorling, bobbing on their tiny wings and buffeted this way and that by the breeze – they would've been indistinguishable from the backdrop as their micro-planet span to face the galaxy rather than deepspace.

A billion stars overlaid the night sky. There were so many of them, multiplying everywhere you looked. No patch of sky was left empty. The longer you stared at any spot, the more you saw: pin-pricks of ancient light from a thousand lightyears away.

Kraglin's jaw dropped. His eyes popped at their widest – they didn't narrow so well anymore.

Yondu didn't know what he saw through them. Kraglin had tentatively described the effect of compound lenses on lights and heat signatures like staring through a glass disco ball, so for now, they were sticking with that.

“It's beautiful,” he said. His tongue, too big for his mouth, made the words phlegmy, like he was talking through a bunged up nose. But Yondu never had the clearest voice to begin with. He couldn't judge.

He shifted, scratching at a chunk of dried spunk that had caked itself to his asscheek. “Be nicer if I weren't so itchy.”

“Oh yeah.” Kraglin winced. “We should probably find a stream.”

Yondu hadn't used the painkillers in the end, but the syringe still rested on the edge of the bag, its label just legible to Yondu's eyes. He hoped Kraglin's weren't sharp enough to spot the lettering, and, once sure Kraglin was distracted rubbing the crust off his cock, he shunted the syringe deeper into the duffel's depths.

“Should probably get Peter to bring us pants too,” he mused, and clamped down on his flinch at the suddenness with which Kraglin wrapped a hairy blue arm around him and yanked him against his side. His chuckle was a rumble, ribs expanding and contracting beneath the navy pelt on his chest.

“Don't think mine'll fit no more,” he said, motioning to his legs. They'd always stuck out several inches beyond Yondu's own, but now they boasted a whole extra foot of length. Yondu elbowed him.

“Hey, y'all got fur! I got nothin' to hide my bits behind, fer the sake of common decency!”

“Didn't think ya had none of that, sir.”

Kraglin's attempt to leer was defused firstly by the fact he was still adapting to the limited expressability of his new face, and secondly because both of them were exhausted from their previous bouts of mattress rolling. Or bilgesnipe-and-bare-rock rolling.

Yondu hadn't known his neck _could_ crack in that direction.

If sleeping on floors wasn't recommended by chiropractors, fucking on them must be an even bigger no-no. His cervix blazed whenever he shifted his legs – Yondu suspected it would for quite some time. But for now at least, that pain came second to the cramps as his body tried to adapt to _not_ being drilled into the nearest surface by a randy A-Chiltarian.

That A Chiltarian soon gave up on his ogling. He shuffled so they sat back to back, staring up at the stars.

“Ya didn't tell me off for callin' you sir,” he said. Not an accusation, just a statement – although Yondu stiffened anyway. “Or cap'n, earlier. Look, what I said before I started... y'know.”

“Tryin' to eat me?”

“Yeah, that. I meant it, okay? Maybe I'dda put it across a lil' nicer, if I weren't...”

“Tryin' to eat me.”

“Okay, ya don't gotta rub it in! But it's true, boss. I don't _want this._ I want you back, whistle on yer lips, arrow by yer side where it belongs.” A rueful smirk, a rub over the crest of his skull. “Fuck knows, this body ain't havin' none of that prosthetic shit.”

Yondu's blood, which had been burbling along at a comfortable lukeworm, dipped to temperatures better measured on the Kelvin scale.

“What'chu sayin',” he asked. “Ya want me to rejoin the fold?”

Somewhere in the void, Kraglin's fledgling Ravager crew awaited their captain's return. They'd be scratching their heads at their chronometers round about now, and eventually, someone would mumble _shouldn't we comm Admiral Stakar...?_

The confrontation was inevitable. That didn't mean Yondu wanted to hurry it along. If Kraglin asked it of him, he'd do it. Right now, he thought he might do anything – but the thought of Stakar's disappointment, of his wrath, of his horribly overdue _apology,_ still made something constrict in his chest, intercostal muscles clamping and ribcage struggling to expand, and he couldn't flarkin' _breathe..._

“Cap'n. Cap'n, no.”

Hands, warm hands, gripping his face and tilting it up into what little light there was.

“Cap'n, I ain't askin' you to rejoin the Ravagers. Cap'n, are you listenin'? I'm saying I wanna be up there, with you. Stakar can find a new boss for the ninety-ninth. I'm quittin' with or without ya – but I'd much rather it was _with,_ if ya get my drift.”

“What'chu sayin'?” Yondu repeated, hoarse and scarcely daring hope. “We join the Guardians? Don't be stupid. Kiddo don't want his old man cramping his style.”

Kraglin shook his head again, adamant. His spit-softened eyeballs glistened beneath the light of fireflies and faraway stars.

“You an' me, sir. Thas all. We oughta have that holiday we never gave ourselves. Fix the _Warbird._ Hell – take my ship and leave yours here. We can paint the name on over. Look, boss. We can go anywhere, do anything, find out what's past the furthest stars...”

“Beyonders,” Yondu answered. “Beyonders are, an' they'd as soon as snap us up as I'd murder for a Beastie worm right now.”

He paused, long enough for Kraglin to droop. That was almost comical, what with how gosh-darn _long_ he'd become.

“But hell, I ain't gonna get Beasties here neither. Think they might have 'em on the other plains? Y'know, Asgard, and shit? Wouldn't mind seein' the golden spires before I die.”

Kraglin perked up. “And robbing them?”

Yondu scoffed. “Course I mean robbin' 'em, numbnuts. Who the heck d'you think I am?”

Kraglin's eyes were faceted red, like brilliant-cut rubies. They were real pretty – he'd put 'em on his console, if he could – but they conveyed little emotion. Nevertheless, they somehow managed to soften when they turned towards Yondu's face.

“You're my cap'n,” he said simply, like that was enough. Maybe for him, it was. “Now les get us to a stream and you in some pants. We can swing by the hut for the prosthetic. Lessee if Rat can't do this fitting better than his last...”

Yondu cleared his throat. “And Stakar?”

“What Stakar don't know can't hurt him.” Kraglin gave his hand a firm squeeze, furry blue fingers locked around his. His smile flashed, each fang glistening a different shade of silver. “Let's have an adventure, boss. You an' me against the galaxy.”

“You an' me against the galaxy,” Yondu repeated, and let himself be pulled to his feet.

It would've all gone perfectly, if he hadn't been very thoroughly fucked not an hour before. The jab in his cervix and the empty clutch of his ass had his knees crumpling. Yondu punched the dirt when he found himself face-down on it.

“Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

“Could always carry you sir?” suggested Kraglin with far too much cheer. Yondu punched the nearest blue leg.

“Fuck _you._ Like, literally. I'm toppin' for the next fuckin' _year._ ”

Kraglin snorted. He wrapped one gibbon-like arm around Yondu's back and the other under his knees, and hefted him up with disgusting grace. Yondu bore it, arms crossed and scowling straight ahead.

“You won't be treatin' me like this when my arrow's back online,” he warned. A warm huff broke over his scalp. Next moment, lips pressed to his scarred temple, softer than Yondu thought possible, given that they hid a double-layer of interlocking teeth.

“Best make the most of it now then, huh sir?”

Yondu, for once, didn't argue. They had an as-of-yet unborn brat to rescue from the Collectors' holdings. But hell – Elzyk had a few years in her yet. Long enough for the two of them to have themselves a holiday. What could possibly go wrong?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I padded this out again, but it still feels a little rushed to me! Oh well - it's not so much an ending as a lead-in to the sequel..... Thank you all so, so much for getting to the end! Your comments and kudos and general flailing gives me no end of joy. <3**


End file.
